Gadgetopia

Social Network and Relationship Finder, or SNARF, was released by Microsoft Research at the end of November. SNARF is designed to assign priorities to email in your Outlook inbox according to established relationships you have with the senders of that mail. As one MS Research guru puts it…

We often say, “Your dog knows the difference between strangers and friends who visit your house; why shouldn’t your e-mail client?”

The concept seems simple enough; it makes an index of mail you’ve received and sent, then counts how many messages you get from and send to certain individuals. People you correspond with more often rank higher and end up higher in priority.

Right now, SNARF only works for Outlook, so I won’t get a chance to try it out any time soon (as a Mac guy, I count that as a Good Thing) but may soon be available for Yahoo and Gmail. But with a concept like this, I can see similar apps following suit.

Hey, wait a minute… Did Microsoft actually have a moment of innovation? Knock me over with a feather!

via New Scientist.