IBM has been doing a lot of research into how to help people use email more efficiently. The result is something they call Remail.
The Collaborative User Experience (CUE) team in IBM Research has spent nearly a decade studying email. Not only has email become one of the most pervasive and successful collaborative tools available, it has also become a key component of IBM’s Lotus Software offerings. In many ways, email can be seen as a victim of its own success – users increasingly suffer from overload and interruptions as well as use email in a manner for which it was not intended.
Their email client incorporates some interesting data visualizations, such as “Thread Arcs” and the “Correspondents Map“, along with an intelligent integrated calendar and chat functionality (recognizing that instant messaging is basically real-time email).
Unfortunately, there is no indication of whether this project will be made available publicly, commercially, or at all.
