Raindrop is a Mozilla Labs project that could simplify the e-mail experience by increasing your inbox's signal-to-noise ratio, along with the contextual information about a message. Raindrop's mission is to "make it enjoyable to participate in conversations from people you care about, whether the conversations are in email, on twitter, a friend's blog or as part of a social networking site."
[ Stay up to speed with the open source community with InfoWorld's Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]
Though the Thunderbird team at Mozilla is developing Raindrop, the group explains that Raindrop is not another e-mail client, but rather, a communication application. I don't completely agree with this distinction. Today's e-mail clients are communication applications, aren't they? They may not be as well suited to handle current Web communications as Raindrop can, but they're still communications applications. In any case, I'm pretty excited about Raindrop and suggest you watch this demo video.
Raindrop can intelligently categorize e-mail based on pre-built and user-defined extensions. For instance, Raindrop's design lead Bryan Clark asks: "why should advertisements from an Airline push an email form my mom further down the list. I know one is more important than the other, why doesn't my email?"
Another example could be grouping e-mails from Twitter based on their conversational importance. Notifications of direct messages and replies are more important to a user than notification of a new follower.
Message categorization is just the beginning. Raindrop aims to support any message source on the Internet.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »
Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »
A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
211 Recommendations
