Of course, we kid, but Google Buzz really was a pretty pathetic attempt at social networking, especially for a company like Google. People picked it up and started playing with it to see what it was like, and then simply dropped it a few minutes later and completely forgot about it, just like a little kid with a short attention span. Sounds an awful lot like what is happening with a current social network that Google is working on, but it’s really not as bad.

In any circumstance, Google announced yesterday that they will be shutting down Buzz and its API to focus more on Google+. They mentioned that “while people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile.”

It’s not only Google Buzz that’s receiving the axe, but also Jaiku, Google Code Search, iGoogle’s social features, and the University Research Program for Google Search, most of which will officially shut down in January.

Another big service that Google has killed off is Google Labs, which we learned about back in July. The one service that we all love officially shut down yesterday, but it won’t affect any of the Labs add-ons that you’re using. Google didn’t specifically mention how they would publicly test new experiments from now on, but I’m sure they will come up with another method sooner or later.

Here’s what Google had to say about all the changes:

Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+.”

The post Google to kill off Google Buzz, Labs goes the way of the dodo first appeared on Techerator.

As a relief to me, Gmail released an “Undo Send” feature quite awhile ago that gives you a small window of opportunity to un-send an email if you notice something wrong with it.  This feature is available in Gmail Labs, which you can access by clicking the small green beaker in the top right corner of Gmail.

You can then locate the “Undo Send” feature, click Enable, and scroll to the bottom of the page to click Save Changes.

Undo Send… Improved!

When Undo Send was first released, you had about 5-10 seconds to click the Undo button before the message was sent.  Now the good folks at Gmail have given us much more time (up to 30 seconds), and the ability to choose how much time we would like to have available.

After activating Undo Send in Gmail Labs, head over to the General tab of your Gmail Settings page.  Scroll down to the “Undo Send” options, where you can now use the dropdown menu to select the amount of time you would like to be able to un-send an email.

The next time you realize you just sent a steamy letter to your grandmother instead of your girlfriend, you can rest easy knowing that the email can be un-sent.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out the rest of our great articles about Gmail.

The post Gmail Improves Undo Send Feature, Saving Careers and Relationships first appeared on Techerator.