Entries tagged with information overload - Channel 10

EMIC - Information Overload and Crisis of Choice

lorigros — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:18:00 GMT

We are drowning in a sea of information overload. Every day, television channels, email, books and music assault our senses with far too much content. The volume of content on the internet and generated by applications is literally exploding. Not only traditional media but millions of individual users are putting their own content on the web. The massive popularity of YouTube is just one example of this phenomenon. In this flood, how do you distinguish between content that matters to you from all the rest? How can you easily discover information, multimedia content and entertainment that matches your interests or preferences? How do you deal with this crisis of choice?

Well, Software Engineers at the European Microsoft Innovation Center (EMIC) are working on a project that allows for the quick creation of prototype solutions that help people solve this crisis of choice.

In this video, Ron Mevissen, Lead Developer of the EMIC Home team, gives an introduction to the topic of information overload and the project that he and colleagues are working on. He also demonstrates the Media Center recommender prototype that helps you find interesting TV programs. After that, Stefan Hirtbach shows a recommender for Outlook that helps you decide the importance of email - which email should I read now, which one can wait. Rich Hanbidge shows a recommender for Xbox Live that helps you find interesting items such as downloadable videos, games, etc. offered by Xbox Live. Rene Hülswitt demos the Virtual Earth recommender that helps find interesting POI (points of interests) such as restaurants or tourist attractions near you.

The EMIC in Aachen, Germany was founded in 2003 and is a Microsoft Research & Development facility. The German lab is unique to Microsoft in its focus on collaborative applied research in Europe. EMIC works in the context of development programs sponsored by the European Commission and the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Its research is focused on enterprise, mobility, home, security, software verification and embedded systems.

For more information on EMIC research, projects and partners, visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/EMIC

To find out more about projects at EMIC, check out these videos over on Channel 9…
EMIC - Specialized Workflow Foundation Activity
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Lori/EMIC-Specialized-Workflow-Foundation-Activity/
EMIC - Delegation Framework
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Lori/EMIC-Delegation-Framework/

Have Urgent Emails Find You With AwayFind

sarahintampa — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:24:00 GMT

Recently, I wrote about an email overload solution that did not impress me, but here’s one that does: AwayFind. While it’s not necessarily the absolute be-all end-all solution to today’s information overload situation, it certainly has more usefulness than Attent’s virtual economy where emails are given prices.

What AwayFind offers instead is the ability to step away from your email without missing the really important items – the “emailed emergencies,” so to speak. The service works via an auto-responder which simply states something like:

Messaging me about something I need to know today (like a canceled meeting)? Please click here to get my attention:

http://awayfind.com/username

You can, of course, edit this message to include other details like when you plan on checking email, whether you’re on vacation, or the phone number to someone else who’s available to help.

If the email was indeed very urgent, the sender will (hopefully) click the link to get in touch with you. This takes them to a web page where they fill in their contact info and the message (which they will likely copy-and-paste from the original email).

The form is not too cumbersome to fill out, but has just enough fields that people will consider whether or not it’s worth their effort. This should help address the slew of email senders who tend to think that their emergencies are your emergencies. If anything, they’ll just go find someone else to get them through their current crisis.

The AwayFind service comes in two variations: a basic, free service and a professional version for $5/month. Most people will need the professional version, as the free service only offers 5 text messages per month. Of course, even the Professional version is somewhat lacking in that department, too, as it only provides 30 texts per month. Then again, hopefully, you don’t have 30 emergencies every month – that’s one emergency per day! Still, it would be nice not to be limited considering that you’re paying for the service.

You can also have email notifications sent to you when someone fills out a form. Ideally, these would be sent to an alternate address (like your personal address), so you’re not tempted to read your other work emails when you receive these alerts. The service actually supports as many different email addresses as you would like.

Whether you’re on vacation, on the road, really busy, or simply overloaded with email, AwayFind can help the most important messages reach you. To try the service for yourself, you can sign up here.

ClearContext Personal Launches Beta

sarahintampa — Thu, 29 May 2008 11:09:00 GMT

If you're swamped by email in your Outlook inbox, you have to try ClearContext, an Outlook add-in that helps analyze and organize your mail. The company has just launched a new product called ClearContext Personal, available as a free download that everyone can use (currently in private beta according to their product page, but a sign up list is available).

You may remember some of our earlier coverage of ClearContext (click here for 7 Outlook Tips). Now the company is rebranding their product naming conventions a bit along with the launch of several new features. The previous professional (paid) version of the software was called ClearContext IMS v4. Now, it's a much more understandable "ClearContext Professional." Registered users of IMS can upgrade and get access to the new features for free.

For everyone else, ClearContext Personal edition is offering some great tools which include the ability to see attachments and contacts from emails in each folder, the ability to save, sort, and forward those attachments, the ability to create distribution lists, meeting requests, etc. from those contacts, and more.

Back when I was a regular ClearContext user at my I.T. job, one of my favorite features were the buttons that let me instantly file either individual emails or entire conversations with one click. Once I had everything set up properly, email came in already categorized, so I wouldn't even need to tell it what folder it belonged in. Of course, for the times I did need to categorize the email, it was only a matter of typing the first letter of the folder's name and hitting "Enter" to assign the category. (Love keyboard shortcuts!)

However, it looks like the next version of ClearContext Personal is offering a feature that can even trump that - the ability to explore and preview your attachments within Outlook just like you were browsing a folder on your desktop. (You have to see the screenshot). That looks extremely useful.

Other ClearContext Personal features include threaded conversations, highlighting of the most important messages in your inbox, and "Notifications Managers" that automatically move what we fondly refer to as "bacn" out of your inbox. (What's bacn? click here to find out. Short answer is "email you want, but not right now").

The new features should certainly help heavy Outlook users get a better reign on their inboxes if they can take a break from their email long enough to install and configure the add-in!