Eudora offers flame retardant email

by Sandy Kendall

May 2, 2001 —

EVER HIT THAT "SEND" button and then wished you hadn't? Have hot words come back to burn the seat of your pants? For the emotionally rash and the impetuously opinionated, Eudora, a division of the San-Diego-based Qualcomm, offers an e-mail feature to help spare you those uncomfortable or career-threatening mishaps.

MoodWatch flashes a chili pepper image in a dialog box if it detects in your message text any language that may be considered "offensive, dictatorial, aggressive, insulting and rude." In fact, there's a range of hotness the program can sense, identified by one, two or three chilies. It can be turned off if you want to flame with abandon, and even when it's on it won't actually censor any message.

As the Eudora website (www.eudora.com) says, "MoodWatch won't stop you from acting irresponsibly in e-mail; it will just let you know when you might be about to send a message you'll regret." Maybe this kind of tool will help chill the trend of office rage.

CIO