new Gmail feature for addicts - block yourself from checking it

Following on from my long and boring post about how our constant need to check our bleeping things lead to a loss of creative potential, Gmail have introduced 13 new features, but the only one that really caught my eye was this:

Email addict: A tool that lets people lock themselves out of their e-mail account for 14 minutes.


Neat! Google once again lead the way in productivity, by ironically making a block for their own product.


(Phone rings) Hey Anthony, I've just sent you through the artwork to your gmail - can you check it and forward it to the printers? It has to go in the next 10 minutes.

Hey yeah sure. Erm, I've just locked myself.. hmmm... we're having Internet problems here, can you send it to my other address?

google mindreading

picture from beyondmagic

I saw this really neat post on HyperHappen's blog. The gist of it is that whenever anything happens, before anyone has even written any news about it, Google already knows about it due to incoming searches.

“When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear [on the web] in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds”.
Google

The second point is, I guess, can this information be used as news somehow? As microblogging takes off, maybe a bunch of microblog posts put together will form a half decent news article?

Link to a global visual representation of people microblogging via Twitter.