Cute, but seems too clever. I got this when I forwarded a message where someone earlier in the thread had talked about attaching. Wonder if Google tracks false positives in the wild?
You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
Cute, but seems too clever. I got this when I forwarded a message where someone earlier in the thread had talked about attaching. Wonder if Google tracks false positives in the wild?
Bruno
on 26 Jul 10Not too cute in my opinion; this has saved me from sending e-mails missing attachments dozens of times. Along with the Gmail labs ‘undo-sending’ feature, it’s a godsend.
Jarin Udom
on 26 Jul 10I definitely prefer getting a few false positives on this one.
Brian
on 26 Jul 10I’ve sent countless emails without attachments with Outlook, but not with gmail thanks to this feature.
Eric Anderson
on 26 Jul 10Thunderbird does this also. I have had several false positives but have also had several real times that I might have forgotten the attachment has thunderbird not reminded me. A alert box does seem fairly intrusive. Thunderbird just has a little bar that pops up across the bottom of the e-mail window.
Daniel Ice
on 26 Jul 10I liked this feature until my company mandated a legal disclaimer on the bottom of the emails that included the word attachment. I had to click through this for every single email I sent. At the time, there was no way to turn it off. There may be now.
justus
on 26 Jul 10Its been a lifesaver for me. As someone looking for work and mailing out several emails to several people a day and really wanting to seem on the ball, its been good to have as a backup. And as for the rest of daily life, never had a false positive. Even so, I do understand and agree that it seems a little “spooky”.
glenn mcdonald
on 26 Jul 10Seems like the problem is it wasn’t clever enough to know to ignore forwarded text. Which is funny, since collapsing that stuff is one of GMail’s strengths.
Chris
on 26 Jul 10I already saw this a while ago. Have a look at Mark Dredze, Tova Brooks, Josh Carroll Joshua Magarick, John Blitzer, Fernando Pereira. Intelligent Email: Reply and Attachment Prediction. Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces. 2008..
Ricky
on 26 Jul 10I also use this.
Rick
on 26 Jul 10LOVE THIS FEATURE because it’s actually saved me from being “stupid” on more than one occasion.
JF
on 26 Jul 10Saved me a couple times too. No false positives yet.
Amber Shah
on 26 Jul 10I got this just yesterday and turns out I had forgotten. False positives might be annoying in that case but the number of emails I’ve sent and received with no attachment leads me to believe this is super useful.
pbruna
on 26 Jul 10KMail from KDE, has this feature from many years.
RF
on 26 Jul 10I’m with Amber Shah: I’ll take some false positives as long as the feature is a net win. Forgotten attachment detector definitely seems to be.
Bill Nordwall
on 26 Jul 10This also happens with the text “I’ve included” – a phrase I use all the time when adding someone to a thread. e.g. “I’ve included Steve Steveson on this email, who will more than happy to explain how to do [x]”.
I get at least two false positives a week because of this.
Anonymous Coward
on 26 Jul 10@Bill Nordwall. Well technically, you “copy” someone onto an email. Perhaps that would avoid false positives?
Another Anonymous Coward
on 26 Jul 10This was in Google Labs for awhile, but was so well received it was baked right into the product. (6 months / year ago / I forget, but remember reading it.)
Ironic: I saw this post this morning and sent an email that said “invoice attached…” (except obviously I forgot to attach the invoice). Google doesn’t recognize “attached”. (Tested 2X) Tested “I have attached” and it worked.
I searched gmail labs and couldn’t find the feature… I wanted to turn it on.
Joe
on 26 Jul 10To answer your question, yes, Google tracks false positives. They actually track every feature that you use in every one of their applications down to every click, keyboard shortcut, time, etc.
They actually calculate a “karma” score based on your usage patterns. The higher the karma you have, the more of a power user you are. Users with high karma get labs features first among other things.
Stan Hansen
on 26 Jul 10Did I imagine this, or was google spying on me: http://browneggmarketing.com/quick-thought/2010/05/10/
This probably existed before I wrote that Blog post but just doesn’t work for Apps for business, just Gmail. Freaks me out either way.
Terence Gannon
on 26 Jul 10I’m going to go against the grain and say I don’t like this feature. Any web-based service provider actively scanning your content for embedded targets is inherently a bad thing, even if it is covered by terms of use and its in pursuit of a laudable goal. What scans are they running they’re not telling you about?
I think real estate types would be the “right to quiet enjoyment of the premises”. In other words, just because he owns the place, doesn’t give your landlord the right to walk in and watch your TV and eat your food.
I realize this is an old argument, but worth re-iterating.
chriskalani
on 26 Jul 10This has saved me tons of times though…
Chris
on 27 Jul 10Good idea, poorly formulated question. When I read “Did you mean to attach files?” I want to press “OK”, which would send it without the attachments. Maybe it should ask “Send this email without attachments?”
Chris (from L.C.)
on 27 Jul 10@Chris (am I talking to myself?!?)
The question you’re answering is “Do you want to send anyways?”. I agree that it’s not the best way they could’ve worded the alert box (people tend to skim the last half of boxes), but, in the context of the actual question, the buttons make sense.
As far as false positives, I’ve forwarded countless emails with “I’ve attached” in them without a trigger, and the feature has saved me a few time. The false positive was probably just a fluke.
Bill Nordwall
on 27 Jul 10@Anonymous Coward
Sure. But to paraphrase Michael Bolton from Office Space:
Why should I change the way I write? Google’s attachment feature is the one that sucks.
Scott
on 28 Jul 10Javascript alert boxes don’t let you have any other options than OK or Cancel, right?
Chris (from L.C.)
on 28 Jul 10@Scott
Yes, that’s correct.
isley aardvark
on 29 Jul 10I actually received a forwarded email without the needed attachment, had either of the two senders been using Gmail they probably would’ve caught it.
Anthony
on 30 Jul 10I’m really wanting this feature in Apple’s Mail application. Its such a handy little thing to have!
This discussion is closed.