I’m going to start a new series on Phone Probe, called “Google’s of the week”. Every week, I’ll find a dead Google project, hoax, or Easter egg and cover it a bit. Many Google projects are made, but not all of them are as successful (or real) as say, Google Chrome, Gmail, Inbox, etc. So without further ado, here is the first edition of Google’s of the week!

Gmail Tap

We are all familiar with Google’s latest Gmail project which is called Inbox by Gmail. It revolutionizes your email inbox by grouping like emails together, setting reminders to read emails, retracting sent emails, etc. What you probably didn’t know, is that before Gmail’s Inbox app, there was another way they thought they would revolutionize email/texting.

Gmail Tap’s main goal was to double the typing speed of email power users by using an ‘intuitive’ keyboard.. All it had was two keys, a dot and a dash, and of course space and backspace keys. Gmail Tap employed Morse code, which not many people know.

If you go to the official Gmail Tap webpage, which is still live, it shows off the capabilities of their revolutionary new keyboard. It includes a video and a Morse code table for dedicated power users to learn the code. It takes two keys and replaces 26 which is on a standard keyboard.

If you would like to try and download the for your phone, you can visit the official Gmail Tap webpage. I have tried to download it, but to no avail. It keeps saying “check back next April 1st to see if it is available”, so I don’t know…