SNARFing your way through e-mail

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The concept is not new. The idea of "social sorting" has been explored by Microsoft and others for years. Researchers at Hewlett-Packard, for example, looked at the patterns of who e-mailed who within HP Labs. Doing so, the researchers found, turned out to be a more effective means of determining working groups than looking at an organizational chart.

How it works

SNARF begins indexing e-mail messages on initial launch. Once it's finished indexing, it shows a window with three panes.

Top pane: People who have sent recent e-mail addressed or cc'd to the mailbox owner. Messages are unread.

Middle pane:  People who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed to anyone.

Bottom pane: All people mentioned in any e-mail the mailbox owner has received in the past week.

A configuration panel enables users to change the types of messages displayed and to sort them in different ways.

A user can choose to double-click on a contact's name and see a list of all recent e-mail from that person. The tool also works with mailing lists: People can sort messages by threads and in chronological order.

Source:  Microsoft Research

Microsoft has also used social sorting to help users wade through Internet forums, in a research effort known as NetScan.

Smith points out that our PCs already know tons about us, in many cases storing years' worth of messages and replies. "This is more than the diarists of the 17th and 18th centuries," he said.

SNARF can also sort messages based on whether they were sent directly to you, whether you were copied on the message or whether you were part of a distribution list.

While such an approach can help sort through the sea of messages, it's not flawless. Smith noted that not everyone who is important to him returns his e-mails.

"My mother, I'm sorry to say, just never replies to my e-mail," he said, quickly noting that it's no reflection on the quality of his relationship with her.

Smith said there is a strong chance the social sorting techniques will find their way into Microsoft products. There have been feelers from the teams responsible for Outlook, Exchange, Hotmail and Outlook Express, he said.

"We're having lots of meetings with people," Smith said.

For now, the research team has put its software out there as a download for people to experiment with. Officially, Microsoft says SNARF will definitely work with Outlook 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 2, though Smith said it may work with other software. SNARF also requires the .Net framework, though it will install it if a computer does not already have the operating system add-on.

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Smith is also working on expanding the research project in several ways. For example, the current version cannot be customized so that a user can say that a certain friend is important, even though they only exchange e-mail once a year.

Allowing users to "tag" e-mails in various ways is among the features that the company is looking at. "We are exploring a range of ideas around that," he said. "It's a very important direction," he added, noting that the next version of Outlook also includes new tagging capabilities.

Moving onto cell phones would be another good move for SNARF, he said. "If you are not at your computer to do triage, having 150 e-mails can be daunting," he said. "It would be nice to have the seven e-mails from colleagues in a separate folder."

[djysrv5]

SNARF not up to snuff

I am not impressed by SNARF. According to Microsoft the technology will allow people to sort through their email. This is technology for people who are too lazy to learn how to write rules. Outlook and Outlook Express both have easy to use, menu drivern, "if/then" rule building tools.

For instance, to sort out mail that is addressed to a mailing list, or spam, just write a rule that says "if TO: is not [your email address], then put in folder "later". This rule eliminates any email that isn't addressed to you directly.

A second rule you can write in Outlook is that if the sender is not in your global address book, for enterprise server users, nor in your contacts list, then put in folder "later" or whatever you want to name your holding tank for deadbeat email.

It is clear that Microsoft's product developers have taken Bill Gates' complaints about the lack of computer science expertise to heart and are now writing software for dummies.

[orphu]

I think you might be missing the point

In an office environment with 100's of users, we can't expect and don't want everyone to have computer science expertise. As an IT developer working with Outlook & Exchange, the last thing I want is a bunch of execs, project managers, and admin staff writing all kinds of Outlook rules to manage mail. They demand and need something simple. As frustrated as some of them become with managing e-mail, expecting them to apply rules to mail would only add another level of complexity (which means the IT staff would end up managing their mail).

Consider this analogy: I could walk to work every day but have technology (a car) that allows me to accomplish the same task more efficiently. Why not use it? I don't need to know every detail of how a car operates under the hood and it works well.

If the target audience were small software development firms where most of the staff are computer literate, I would say this application's not needed. However, most businesses have an overwelming number of staff that wouldn't know an Oulook rule if it bit them on their hind-ends.

Just my 2 cents...

[hadaso]

The sad thing: they'll patent it!

The sad thing: they'll patent it!

It is obvious that statistics can be used to to estimate the probablity that you'd want to read a particular message. It is obvious that statistics can be used to learn your habits and the way you categorize things and then do it for you quite well. There is a well known formula for computing such probabilities that was known for centuries, and it's called Bayes formula. It has already been done to separate spam from ham, and in plenty of non-email uses. It's just math.

But it is also obvious that US patent examiners do not understand the meaning of the word "obvious", and so M$ would be able to register a patent that would grant it exclusive rights to using statistics to categorize email, and then everyone would be forced to either do it the old way or use their dumb and buggy email software.

[pinoypiloteer]

popfile does the same thing

i don't see how this project is that much different from popfile. and if popfile is not yet capable of sorting email the snarf would hopefully do, i'm sure such sorting capability would eventually find its way into popfile. just my two cents!

[Quelix]

Thundercats Reference

This is one more in a short list of examples of Microsoft exploiting not only the name but also the furry warm and friendly feelings that are associated with the Thundercats character of the same name:



http://www.purrsiathunder.org/graphix/tcicons/snarf.jpg

[mj_junglemungle.com]

Good first start

I'll wait for the outlook plugin though. I don't want a separate UI to deal with.

mj
http://www.junglemungle.com

email

how about a freeware or firefox thingy which asks senders to confirm their email or copy a code like when joining a yahoo group. Im tired of bs email and with all the crap about snarf and span and junk filters, why not just cut to the chase
I send email and receive a confirm email instantly . i clik it and then my origimail gets thru
Of course already accepted FRIENDS wouldnt need to repeat the process.
How about a genius doing that for FREE. eme if it already exists.
[e-mail]

[Eskiegirl302]

Want a REAL Filter?

Hey people I beat the spam thing. This is what I did:

First I had the mailboxes, Yahoo, Msn. Well Yahoo of course got overcrowded. I had everything in Yahoo. Then one day, after 6 years of yahoo, it crashed on me. Like I said, I had everything in it. I tried to change my pw, so I could get back into the site. No luck. The messenger was not working, ect. I was angry. So angry. What to do? All my contacts, mail everything. Ok. I am cool. I had just gotten the gmail from google. I had installed the google talk and had some of my friends on it from yahoo. Cool beans now. I got hold of one of my contacts from the google mail. He lives in India. Now we were fixed! Yahoo did not run the same program there as here. India had the older one. So, I gave my friend my password and Id for yahoo. Voila! He got in my account, changed my password and I was set. I went first to messenger and copied and pasted all my contacts from there into my wordpad. Then went to mail. Got everything I wanted from the Mailbox and sent it to my gmail. Completely wiped everything out of my account. Then deleted the account. Then, I went back to yahoo and made a new account. Now, this is where all of my junk mail goes. I keep the mailbox there just for that purpose. So when I visit a site and you just have to sign up, I use the yahoo. When I check the mail, if I want to keep that one, I forward it to my gmail. Still have msn, as a reserve account. I have 5 mailboxes and use each one for different purposes. That way all I have to do is sign in and keep or delete the whole dang thing. I dont filter in yahoo. Just let it all go cause it is all junk and I just trash it. You get notification about yahoo mail, as soon as you sign up. So when you sign up on the site you went to you can go to yahoo and check the mail, and just delete. No junk in your good mailboxes! Never ever. I still use yahoo, but I also use all the other sites too. So now I have no spam, I will never lose my favorite contacts, and have the benefit of my business box, personal box, junk box, ect. Go get your mailboxes! Loving it

Eskie

[osbjmg]

Requires outlook

Locking more users in outlook -- escape while there's still time! Wow, what a bloated program (outlook that is).

Wish they would do some basic things first

Why can't the Outlook Junk Mail filter automatically add as safe sender anyone I've replied to? That way I could at least start with the mail from "correspondents".

[DeusExMachina]

Not a good idea

There are any number of reasons that this is not a good idea, not
the least of which being Outlook's crappy security. Also, a number
of opt-out mechanisms would assure you would add a number of
"unsafe" senders to your "safe senders" list.

[208774626618253979477959487856]

Go email!

http://www.analogstereo.com/ford_mustang_owners_manual.htm

[cnxn]

sidefinder.net

This should help with email overload. ;-)

[Norseman]

"Our software is smarter than you are."

That should be Microsoft's motto. Software that tries to think for me gives me gas. Just give good functionality and keep out of the way of what I'm doing. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that concept.

[Norseman]

Or maybe "Our software is as smart as your dog."

Isn't it great to see what wonders the billions and billions of dollars Microsoft has invested in R&D is producing?

[Mark Thomson]

NEO Pro

Check out NEO (Nelson Email Organizer). Its very clean and does this and more.

[PhantomRex]

RE: NEO Pro

Oh yes!
A dizzying array of features. I have been using it for the last 3 years.

Microsoft was smart (?) enough to include SO many of those features in Outlook 2003. Thus, this product has less value COMPARED to pre-Outlook 2003 value. But there are more than enough features/efficiencies to justify it still.

Instead of listing the features and the usefulness of this product, take a look at their site (http://www.caelo.com/products/learn/) AND read 3rd party reviews (ZDNet, CNET, Download.com etc).

Cheers,