Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Email: Out with the old

We lived without email for generations, but now that it has been in common usage over ten years old, we see signs of wear and tear: that's "tear" as in crying, not ripping up.

We try to get rid of messages once read and file those we need to keep, but they keep pouring in and, as we all know, it's hard to find what you're looking for in a mailbox full of bits and bytes.

My manual solution is to:
Prioritize
File
Archive


Yesterday, a friend told me about a unique strategy you can start doing today. Ready for this?

For each email you receive and read, get rid of two.
So, as she said: "If I get 18 messages, I have to get rid of 36."
What a great way to start slowly conquering the overflowing mailboxes. Thanks JB!

Another wonderful thing about technology is that people are always working on new ideas, and there will be smarter email tools in a couple years. What's in the works? It's a concept called Categorization Technology. Think of it as "tags" or the tagging process that shows instantly how many web pages (or in this case, emails) contain certain words.

Tools like SenseClusters, Digitality, and my favorite name: Pigmail, are underway. We'll soon see which rises to the top and helps conquer email overload. One of the companies working on this has obtained the 3000 Enron emails released by the courts and are using them to create the classification models. If you want access to that file, email me!