SNARFing your way through e-mail

With the world's in-boxes overflowing with unread messages, researchers at Microsoft are offering up a tool they hope will help people sort through the morass.

The software maker this week released a free utility that aims to sort e-mail in a new way: It can organize messages not just by how recent they are, but also by whether the recipient knows the sender well.

The program, known as SNARF, bases its approach on the fact that people tend to interact more with messages from those they care about.

News.context

What's new:
Microsoft researchers are offering up a tool, called SNARF, that uses social analysis of e-mail use to enable people to organize the messages in their in-boxes.

Bottom line:
The technology aims to help people sort through the morass of incoming e-mail more effectively. Though they are now part of a research project, SNARF features could make their way into products soon.

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"You don't respond to everybody, and not everybody responds to you," said Marc Smith, one of the Microsoft researchers who developed SNARF, or Social Network And Relationship Finder.

Though SNARF is a research project for now, Microsoft said that similar features could soon make their way into its e-mail products.

Smith boils it down this way. His computer, for all its power, serves up his e-mail without distinguishing junk mail from messages sent by close friends. His dog, on the other hand, learns who his friends are and stops barking at them.

"If my dog can tell who strangers are, apart from friends...my e-mail reader should be able to do the same," he said.

The task is increasingly important as people become overloaded with e-mail. Though many like to be alerted to new messages, the barrage of notifications is now so frequent for many workers that it is nearly impossible to get any creative work done without being interrupted.

"The machines got us into this problem," Smith said. "They are going to have to get us out of it."

Smith calls today's method of sorting e-mail the "ADD sort order," in which the newest messages are constantly presented first, regardless of who sent them. There has to be a better way, he said.

Figuring out who your friends are may not seem like a task well-suited to computers, but Smith said it's simply a matter of making sure that the computer is adding up the right things.

"The beautiful thing about computers is that they are really, at their core, accounting machines. They love to count things. Social relationships are countable," Smith said.

In SNARF's case, the software looks at how often people correspond with particular content in the body of a message and how often they reply to one another's correspondence, among other things.

[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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 &#38; 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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Just my 2 cents...

[hadaso]

The sad thing: they'll patent it!

The sad thing: they'll patent it!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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: <br /><br /><img src="http://www.purrsiathunder.org/graphix/tcicons/snarf.jpg"><br /><br /> <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.purrsiathunder.org/graphix/tcicons/snarf.jpg" target="_newWindow">http://www.purrsiathunder.org/graphix/tcicons/snarf.jpg</a>

[mj_junglemungle.com]

Good first start

I'll wait for the outlook plugin though. I don't want a separate UI to deal with.<br /><br />mj<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.junglemungle.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.junglemungle.com</a>

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 <br />I send email and receive a confirm email instantly . i clik it and then my origimail gets thru<br />Of course already accepted FRIENDS wouldnt need to repeat the process. <br />How about a genius doing that for FREE. eme if it already exists.<br />[e-mail]

[Eskiegirl302]

Want a REAL Filter?

Hey people I beat the spam thing. This is what I did:<br /><br />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<br /><br />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 <br />the least of which being Outlook's crappy security. Also, a number <br />of opt-out mechanisms would assure you would add a number of <br />"unsafe" senders to your "safe senders" list.

[208774626618253979477959487856]

Go email!

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.analogstereo.com/ford_mustang_owners_manual.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.analogstereo.com/ford_mustang_owners_manual.htm</a>

[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&#38;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!<br />A dizzying array of features. I have been using it for the last 3 years.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Instead of listing the features and the usefulness of this product, take a look at their site (<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.caelo.com/products/learn/" target="_newWindow">http://www.caelo.com/products/learn/</a>) AND read 3rd party reviews (ZDNet, CNET, Download.com etc).<br /><br />Cheers,