Microsoft Corp.'s research arm yesterday released a free tool to help users slog through e-mail messages in their inbox in the order of importance, according to one of the researchers who developed the software.
Created within Microsoft Research, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, or SNARF, is an application that uses the same database as a user's e-mail client to count the number of times users send and receive e-mails from people, said A.J. Brush, a researcher in the community technologies group at Microsoft Research.
Calling this kind of e-mail triage process "social sorting," researchers worked with graduate students, at least one of whom is studying sociology, to come up with the tool so it will help e-mail users prioritize the e-mails in their inbox based on how often they send and receive e-mails from contacts, she said.
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