Enhanced Messaging Workshop at AAAI

I'm in Chicago for the AAAI 2008 Conference's Enhanced Messaging Workshop. Greg and I will be talking about some of the driving ideas behind Xobni, the hardships of building commercial email software. We'll also demo some products from our skunkworks.

I'm hoping that this workshop will hopefully fill an important gap: There are some conferences about spam fighting on one end, and general machine learning / data mining / user interfaces on the other end, but no forum for academic discussions of fighting email overload. See you there!

Six Mobile Ideas

Here are 6 ideas for mobile applications I’d like to use. Two of them are about easier data access:

1. Access to desktop files: I’d like to list, search, and open files from my desktop on my phone. Dropbox lets you do this through an iGoogle gadget, but I’d like to go to a simple page on my iPhone.


2. Offline content: When it has WiFi reception, my phone preloads itself with all the content that’s on top of Hacker News, and lets me to quickly browse it when on the go. Similar to AvantGo from the old Palm days, but doesn’t need you to plug your phone into your computer.

The rest are location-based services which require either good position triangulation or built-in GPS on your phone:

3. Instant Meetup: An extension to my Academic Lunch Dating idea from years ago. I’d like to do things like: “I’m in Washington Square Park right now and would like to find someone with similar interests”. It’s GPS-powered instant friendship building or dating.
4. A Location-based Upcoming: “I’m at 3rd and Market and would like to do something exciting within walking distance.” This would give recommendations of what to do – it might give you your friends’ party 4 blocks down, or the latest SFMOMA special exhibit.
5. Yelp it now: Instead of tediously going through Yelp’s interface – which is super slow on my iPhone – I want a simple, fast-loading page that returns the top 3 rated restaurants on Yelp within walking distance.
6. NextBus plus GPS: Using built-in GPS, finds out which bus stop I’m at. List the next bus arrivals here, in any directions. Much like the existing NextBus, but no scrolling through pages of stops.

Has someone already done any of this? If so, please leave a comment and let me know.

Wired: The Great American Timesuck

Xobni is mentioned in this month's print edition of Wired Magazine.

Clive Thompson writes:

"[...] I've been using a new software app called Xobni to manage my horribly overstuffed inbox. Among other cool tricks, Xobni spots hidden patterns in your email usage. [...] This is incredibly useful knowledge."

This is one of my favorite pieces of Xobni coverage so far: When I was a teenager, I used to read every single issue of Wired cover to cover. It was the magazine from the future.

An online version of the article is here.

Book Review: Send

Send is a refreshing book. In email research and email software startups, we spend our time coming up with better ways of displaying and organizing email. In this book, David Shipley, Op-Ed page editor of the New York Times and Will Schwalbe, a journalist and editor, discuss the other part of the equation: The humans behind those messages.

Send shines the light on emotions and motives: The emails that are sent to create the impression of progress. The passive-aggressive messages you send when you feel like you’ve been wronged and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

At parts, the book reads like "Email for Dummies", but there are some highlights: I shiver when people send me subject lines like "Quick question" and "Great News", when they should have written "Release date for next version?" and "Expenses approved". This is the book you want to hand out to the guilty.

I'm already wondering about how to put this into a product: Could we make software that orders people to rewrite the email in a more effective manner? It could pop up "Your subject line sucks" and make you rewrite it before you send. Could we find out the mood someone was in when sending a message and display it alongside the email? Food for thought.

Disclosure: I didn't buy this book - I found it in my snail mail one day, and I can only guess that the authors sent it to me. Keep'em coming - this is a good way to get your ideas read by the email community.

"Email Sins" on NPR

This morning, National Public Radio ran a story about how people are feeling crushed by the volume of email they receive. In the story, NPR's Yuki Noguchi interviews Joel Cherkis of Microsoft, John Kremer of Yahoo, and me. I chat about how new ways of looking at email, such as Xobni's people-centric view, can help us tame the email flood.

NPR: E-Mail Sins, Horror Stories and Strategies - "Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails"