Email overload article in Salon.com

[Anonymous]

There's an interesting article on e-mail overload in Salon.com today (July 16). The author talks about innovative new e-mail programs being developed that will have search capabilities, so they can eliminate the need for creating folders to sort e-mails into. That would be a different approach, complementary to the DA approach. It would be possible to leave everything in an in-box and process it by sorting & searching.

[apinaud]

Yes, thats an option, you can search in outlook, and almost any email software, but the feeling of an EMPTY inbox is better, also my expirence is that folders reduce the search, even with search engines...

[TesTeq]

apinaud,
But sometimes it is really difficult to put an e-mail into one folder only (it may belong to two or more different projects, because the sender wanted to write about more than one issue in one e-mail).
TesTeq

[Anonymous]

TesTeq

What I do when it comes to emails that could live in multiple folders I assign them multiple categories. I then set up searches and then save them as shortcuts.

Seems to have worked for me so far, but I am not a person who lives by emails. In a normal work day ten would be pushing it.

Any comments on this.

Rav.

[apinaud]

Dear TestTeq

I also have those cases that I want the email in more than one place, i just create a copy of the message in each folder, if you use outlook that is a finger away.

I treat email as paper, if a need to have it in 2 places, you make a copy ad put it in 2 places.

Good Luck!

[kkirksey]

There's an interesting article on e-mail overload in Salon.com today (July 16). The author talks about innovative new e-mail programs being developed that will have search capabilities, so they can eliminate the need for creating folders to sort e-mails into.

Those kind of programs exist now. I've been using one for years:

http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith/index.shtml

Mailsmith uses a database to store mail rather than keeping in text file format, making complex searches possible. I keep one folder of saved incoming mail, and one folder of saved outgoing mail, and when I need to find anything, I just search for it. For stuff I search for frequently, I've created AppleScripts that I invoke with a keystroke.

[helenjc]

I've found that by using 'lookout' with outlook the need for folders to store and hopefully find messages is gone.
Lookout is so incredibly fast and accurate that every time I can find something by entering a keyword that i think *could* be associated with the item I am amazed.
I use the gtd addin which tracks my 'to do' emails but don't know how I did without the lookout until it was recommended by one of the GTD posting board members. The fabulous side benefit ist that you can get it to index all 'documents' on your hard drive. I was using powermarks previously for this but now use powermarks only for websites and lookout for everything else.
Interesting to see that Microsoft have 'bought' the technology. Better download it quickly if you like it in case it suddenly goes into storage while being developed (no they promise that won't happen)
www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/.
cheers
Helen

[mochant]

Unfortunately (and very short-sighted IMO), Microsofot has pulled the download from the site.

[reinout]

Unfortunately (and very short-sighted IMO), Microsofot has pulled the download from the site.

http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/07/19.html has a bit more about this. It links to a discussion area where I found the following:


http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/HDL9382/Lookout120.exe The executable (for as long as this works, apparently till somewhere today or so)
Someone else was happy with http://www.x1.com. Didn't check that one out myself


I don't use outlook (or windows) myself, but I just happened upon those links.

Reinout

[mochant]

The download link is supposed to expire, according to the developer. Get it while you can if you're interested.

I've used x1 extensively and have a review on my Marc's Outlook on Productivity blog. It's a very good tool and has some unique features but it forces a context switch that Lookout did not. Becuase it is a separate application, you have to switch out of Outlook to perform your searches. And, to find a particular file or e-mail or attachment or contact, you might have to execute up to four searches as it treats each data type separately.

It's also more than twice as expensive ($99 vs. Lookout's announced $40).

Another alternative is FILEHand Search (which I also reviewed) which is the same price as Lookout and will, in its next release, allow for search of attachments in addition to files and e-mail messages.

http://www.filehand.com/

[jmarkey]

I have been using the Lookout software for a couple of months now and can highly recommend it. It can find things with blazing speed. I have set up the index to search Outlook, my favorite places and my Word documents.

[Anonymous]

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=09b835ee-16e5-4961-91b8-2200ba31ea37&displaylang=en