{"id":3778,"date":"2026-10-09T07:34:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T14:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/09\/i-made-a-three-second-hourglass-for-the-all-hands-reminder-then-had-to-find-out-where-it-could-play\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T07:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T14:35:10","slug":"i-made-a-three-second-hourglass-for-the-all-hands-reminder-then-had-to-find-out-where-it-could-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/09\/i-made-a-three-second-hourglass-for-the-all-hands-reminder-then-had-to-find-out-where-it-could-play\/","title":{"rendered":"I Made a Three-second Hourglass for the All-hands Reminder, Then Had to Find Out Where It Could Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The quarterly all-hands has a rhythm. The invite goes out six weeks ahead and everybody accepts it without reading it. Two days before, I send the reminder email, and that one is the problem. Same subject line as last quarter, and from the replies on the morning (“wait, is that today?”) I know plenty of people scroll past it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this quarter I wanted the top of that reminder to move: one short clip that says “time is running out” without me typing it in capitals. An hourglass felt right. Warm light, a desk, no date baked in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had never made a video in my life. I had a lunch break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can an Email Even Play a Video?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I should have checked this first; I checked it last. The answer is no, not where it matters. Gmail will not play a video in the body of an email. Outlook on the web and on phones blocks it. Apple Mail is the exception, which rules out most of our company and all of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does play almost everywhere is an animated GIF: Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook on the web and the Outlook apps all run them. The classic Outlook on Windows is the awkward one; older versions show only the first frame, newer ones play the loop a few times and stop. So whatever I made had to look fine frozen, because for a chunk of the finance team that is all it would ever be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So: make a clip, turn it into a GIF for the email, and put the real clip somewhere it can play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Did the Clip Come From?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

rewind.ai, because its video page lets you fill everything in before it wants to know who you are: a text box for the scene and a row of menus under it, one of which sets the shape. I chose wide; an email header is wide. I asked for an hourglass on a wooden desk, sand running, warm morning light from a window, and a slow push of the camera toward it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
My hourglass sentence in the box, the wide shape picked below it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It asked for nothing until I pressed Generate, and then only an email address; no password to think up, no card. On the free account a clip runs up to three seconds, plenty before people start wondering whether the sand means something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the page said it had finished, there was the hourglass mid-desk, a window glowing gold and out of focus behind it, a thin stream of sand falling into the pile below, a dusting of grains at the base. A download button sits under the clip, a second one copies a link to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did mine on the free ai video generator from text<\/a> page: type the scene, choose wide, hand over an email at the end, download.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What About the Tools We Already Pay For?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My manager’s first question. Canva’s AI video page has a big generate button that drops you into Canva’s AI assistant, behind the Canva login, and the questions lower on that page say the clip feature is for Pro, Business, Enterprise and Nonprofit users, with a monthly cap. I am not on a paid seat; if you are, that is probably the shortest route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adobe Express opens its generator on a sign-in screen: an email field or the Google, Facebook and Apple buttons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Where Adobe Express starts: the sign-in screen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And the Ones Built for Video People?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pika’s Try Pika button goes straight to a form wanting an email and a fresh password, or a Google or Discord login. Luma’s Try for free wants a first name, a last name and an email, or Google or Apple. For one hourglass on a lunch break, each is a new account first and a prompt box second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Did It Get Into the Email?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Through ezgif’s video-to-GIF page, no account needed: choose the MP4, upload, trim nothing, download the GIF. The page says uploads are deleted within the hour; mine had an hourglass and nothing else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GIF went at the top of the reminder, linked to the event page on the intranet, the usual text under it. The first frame of the hourglass stands up on its own, so the old-Outlook crowd saw a nice still and lost nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Did the Actual Clip Play?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Two places. The event page on the intranet got the MP4 as a muted, looping header, and the reminder post in the all-hands chat channel got it as an uploaded file, which the chat played right in the post. I did not attach it to the calendar invite; an attachment on an invite travels with every update, and I update that invite a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Would I Type Next Time?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One object, one surface, one light, one movement. Keep words out of the picture: the date goes in the email text, not into a clip where letters come out wrong. And resist the countdown. One hourglass is a nudge; a red timer with “LAST CHANCE” over it is what people learn to scroll past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three people replied to say they liked the hourglass. One asked whether it was a hint. It was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The quarterly all-hands has a rhythm. The invite goes out six weeks ahead and everybody accepts it without reading it. Two days before, I send the reminder email, and that one is the problem. Same subject line as last quarter, and from the replies on the morning (“wait, is that today?”) I know plenty of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":3777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-and-gpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3780,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions\/3780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejaflow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}