Google’s recent introduction of Gmail Labs takes it’s already developed perpetual beta approach a step further.
Gmail Labs is a way for Google to take ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time as well as ideas that wouldn’t normally be picked and let Gmail users decide whether they’re good (and should be further developed) or not (and should be dropped).
Perpetual beta, is a term used to describe software or a system that never leaves the development stage of beta. It’s often used by developers in order to allow them to constantly release new features that may not be fully tested. The term represents one of Web2.0 key application development practices to “release early and release often”.
By adopting this approach of treating users as co-developers, Google significantly reduces development risk and costs. Many product development decisions are based on user feedback and help Google “make what it can sell”.
Gmail Labs currently tests 13 new features. One of them is “Random Signature” which adds a random quotations to your email signature.
I’m the first to say that quotes are a great way to offer recipients of your emails a peek into who you are and what you believe in. But, an irrelevant or inappropriate, randomly selected quote can do more harm than good. Imagine a vegan signing with this quote by Homer Simpson: “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?”
A quote that’s hilarious to some, isn’t that funny to others… What is funny though, or not, is that countless jokes that made only me laugh, and remarks that backfired, still haven’t taught me that lesson.
Sure enough, following the launch of Gmail Labs, many requests for better quotes feeds for the “Random Signature” feature have been posted. We heard the call and now, instead of the default quotes feed, you can use QuotesDaddy’s customized quotes feeds by any tag, author or best, your own personal favorite quotes.
The other thing that currently still holds many users from using Gmail Labs Random Signature is that the quote + author is limited to 96 characters. Even for the most succinct authors that’s not enough and the quote ends up being automatically truncated half way thr…