First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who has downloaded
or signed up for the ClearContext Personal beta. The level of
interest has been incredible. We’re
working hard so we can send invites to everyone still on the waiting list as
soon as possible.
One thing we didn’t really expect was how quickly so many people
would download, install, and send us feedback about their experience with
ClearContext Personal. Based on that, we’re
changing our plans a little bit. The
initial plan had been to roll out the first wave of invites to a group of
Outlook 2007 users, follow that with a quick round of bug fixes, and roll out
to a larger group of Outlook 2007 users plus Outlook 2003 users. We’ve received a lot of enhancement requests
and feature suggestions (many of which were already on our plans for the next
beta) from our beta testers in a few key areas that we agree will make the product both easier to use and more valuable to our users. So we’ve decided to extend development a few
weeks and roll a number of these changes into the product. People currently on the waitlist will
have to wait a little longer than initially planned, but the beta you’ll get
will be a much improved version of the product. Again, thanks a ton to everyone who has provided us with all this great
feedback. Here are a few key areas
we’re working on:
Guided Setup – walk-through during setup with more details
on contact prioritization and options for
color-coded inbox views
Filing – make one-click filing capability
even smarter and more automatic, so keeping email organized will be even easier
Contacts and Attachments – additional
actions on contacts and attachments, and make it easier to work with groups of related items
Message Prioritization – make it easier for people to customize how important messages from different contacts are to
them
Notification Managers – simplify the installation
process for notification managers
We really appreciate all the feedback we’ve received so far
and are excited about these improvements that will make the product even easier
to use and give users a much better email experience from the first moment they
install the product. Please keep signing
up for the beta and stay tuned to the blog for more
updates. Thanks!
I don’t know if you noticed, but we had a few things written about our Personal Beta launch in the last few days. Here’s a collection of the latest stories:
ClearContext’s Stab at Making Email More Manageable – May 19, 2008 Mark Hendrickson – TechCrunch “ClearContext Personal has a number of tricks up its sleeve. First, it analyzes 30-40 characteristics of each message that hits your inbox to determine its priority…”
When Outlook Gets Personal, It Get Clear Context – May 19, 2008 Om Malik – GigaOm “One really good reason to download this app: it automatically sort emails from a wide variety of applications and websites into nice little folders. You can quickly see how many Facebook messages or Evite invitations you got.”
ClearContext tames Outlook – May 19, 2008 Rafe Needleman – Webware “On Monday, ClearContext, which has had a paid, enterprise-level e-mail organizer for a while now, is releasing ClearContext Personal, a free, de-featured version of the product”
Some additional information about the new release, along with a sign up for the Personal Beta, can be found here. All of the features in Personal are being incorporated into the Professional product. The Pro production release will be a free upgrade for all registered IMS v4 customers. If you’re interested in signing up for the upcoming Beta of the Professional product, go to ClearContext > About from within Outlook, press Email Support and send that email along with the words BETA INFO in the body. We’ll add you to the Pro beta list and let you know when a download is available. Thanks!
All of us at ClearContext are really excited to announce the start of the beta program for ClearContext Personal. This free Outlook add-in helps people organize their email and make their inbox (and email experience) just plain better. At ClearContext, we have years of experience solving information overload challenges for email power users who deal with incredible amounts of email while managing multiple concurrent projects within Outlook. In talking to lots of individuals and companies about those problems, we’ve found that it’s not just those users that are overwhelmed with email; it seems like just about all business email users are frustrated with email and feel stressed trying to keep up with it. With ClearContext Personal, we expand the reach of our solutions to all Outlook email users who want a better answer to dealing with email overload. Here’s a demo:
Our goal with ClearContext Personal is to identify the most common problems with email faced by users of all types and provide solutions that work without requiring any effort or behavior change on their part. We want to help people figure out which email they need to deal with, put it in context with the information related to it so they have what they need to take action, and then automatically file it in the right place so all related information is neatly organized for them. And all those huge reply-to-all threads, automated notification emails, and other unimportant messages clogging the inbox? Yeah, put that to the side so they don’t keep getting interrupted. Doesn’t that sound better already?
I’ve written a lot about how email needs to improve. With this release of ClearContext Personal we’re taking some big steps towards addressing some of the key challenges I’ve discussed involving volume and context. And that’s just the start. TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and GigaOm have already written about this launch – we really appreciate the great coverage from those writers and are really excited that improving email has become one of the hottest topics of discussion and innovation lately.
We’re all pretty tired around here and we still have a few finishing touches to put on some of the new web pages, so for now I’ll send you over to check out the ClearContext Personal product pages. Later today or tomorrow I’ll make a post that goes into more detail about the functionality of this release, what to expect in upcoming releases (including ClearContext Professional – a free upgrade for registered IMS v4 customers that incorporates all the new features in ClearContext Personal), and all sorts of other information about this launch.
I’ll end this post with a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped make this launch possible – everyone at ClearContext, the journalists/bloggers, and all of our incredible users who have given us such great feedback and assistance in developing a product we are sure you’ll love.
In the 2nd edition of Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, Michael introduces an entirely new theory of task management that he calls Manage-Your-Now! (MYN for short). Here’s what he has to say about the new system:
"…it is a system to successfully manage the overload of work that you have on your plate right now. It truly does help you manage that period of time you tend to be most anxious about: your now. It helps you choose what tasks to do now, what e-mail to focus on now, what not to worry about now. You gain confidence that the important tasks are attended to, which greatly lowers any anxiety you might have about your workday."
I had the pleasure of reviewing the book before it was published and found that the MYN system perfectly articulates the way that I have managed my tasks for years; providing focus on the things that must be completed in the next week or so and pushing everything else outside the "Now Horizon." MYN puts process behind this concept to ensure that you stay focused on your immediate tasks without dropping the ball on anything coming over the horizon. For a more thorough look at the theory, see this sample chapter from the book.
MYN-powered ClearContext IMS for Microsoft Outlook
We are very excited about the release of Michael’s new book and our software to support it. If you are looking for a comprehensive, end-to-end task management methodology, check out the new Manage-Your-Now system and MYN-IMS v4.
We’re really excited about some of the new features we have coming soon to IMS. Here’s a quick update on what we’ve been working on, plus an opportunity to get an early look and start providing us feedback on the new stuff.
ClearContext IMS 4 Upgrade
Our next release will be a free upgrade for all licensed IMS 4 users. In our last product plan update we hinted at some prototype projects we’ve been working on. Based on initial feedback to those projects, we decided to roll a few of them into this near term release.
Contacts and Documents – The IMS Dashboard currently pulls together emails, tasks, and appointments related to a project. Now we’re adding documents to that list – helping you deal with all of the attachments that flow through email. We’ve also extended the product to not only let you manage the tasks and activities around a project, but also find and interact with all the contacts related to a specific project or subject. Stay tuned to the blog for more details about other cool stuff we’ll be doing around contacts and documents in Outlook.
New Dashboards – The current IMS Dashboard is focused on projects. But lots of emails that clog up your inbox are notifications of some sort that can be analyzed, processed, and organized for you automatically. We don’t think you should have to manually process all the social networking requests, log file reports, corporate announcements or various other types of status and notification emails that arrive every day. We’ve developed another type of dashboard to automatically manage this sort of processing.
Those and other new features are part of our plan to have IMS address the issues outlined in Deva’s Inbox Thesis blog post:
The volume of information that people (people in this context refers primarily to “information workers” but is rapidly growing to include just about everyone) receive via email is far more than they can process effectively using the sequential processing of individual messages for which most email clients are designed. At the same time, the information and the range of tasks/actions that flow through email are increasing in scope, importance, and variety. This necessitates new means of information processing consisting of the following elements: prioritization of incoming email, categorization of information, aggregation of related information, and context-specific actions for different types of information. This allows users to process information more effectively by taking advantage of the context of the information to provide a set of relevant actions to deal with information at a higher level than a single message basis.
Based on your feedback, we’re also making a number of improvements to the existing IMS 4 features. These include:
Better data display and interactivity in the project dashboard
Performance enhancements related to message scoring, threading, synchronization and startup
Numerous other enhancements you have suggested to us on our forums (Thanks!)
So how do you get to see all this cool new stuff? We’ll be opening up the beta in stages. If you’re interested in getting a look at early, pre-release software, send an email to beta at clearcontext dot com. We’ll put you on the top of the advance preview list and notify you when a beta version of IMS is ready for download. Honestly, I can’t wait for you to get your hands on this stuff and let us know what you think about it!
A quick note to registered IMS v3 and earlier users. Purchase an upgrade to v4 before the end of 2007 to take advantage of the introductory upgrade price of $29.95 USD. The regular upgrade price of $44.95 applies starting January 1.
We have posted an update to our Vista Gadget, ClearContext Inbox Alert. It’s available for download from our site and should be up on the Microsoft Live Gadget Gallery sometime next week.
This update provides greater connection stability and enhances the preview pane to support Outlook 2002 and 2003 customers as well as 2007 users who aren’t running an anti-virus program.
While we’re on the subject of Outlook gadgets, the Microsoft Office Outlook team blog has details on their Outlook 2007 Appointments and Tasks gadgets, both excellent additions to your sidebar. Check it out.
The Contact Exporter is a beta feature in ClearContext IMS v4 that lets you create and export groups of email addresses found in messages stored in the Outlook folders you select.
Select the email addresses from a prioritized list of contacts generated for you to create an Outlook distribution list, Outlook contact records, or a CSV export file.
Send a group email to people on your team – Select your work or team folder and create an Outlook distribution list.
Create a holiday party invitationfor your friends – Select your personal correspondence folders and generate a list that you can send an email to or export to an online invitation service.
Add all your business contacts to LinkedIn or your personal contacts to Facebook – Select the appropriate folders and create an export file you can upload.
Here’s a quick guide to using the Contact Exporter:
Download the latest version of IMS v4 here. If you’re not already a ClearContext user, see our getting started page to learn more about the product. (Note: The Contact Exporter download is in a 30-day trial of ClearContext IMS, but the Contact Exporter will remain functional after the trial period is over.)
Once you’ve installed ClearContext IMS v4.0.3 or higher:
Open Outlook and go to ClearContext > Contact Exporter from the main menu.
Select the folders containing emails you want to export contact information from.
The contacts found in those folders are divided into a list divided into three groups: More Relevant, Relevant, and Less Relevant. Use the selection links to select/deselect groups of those contacts or the checkboxes to individually select/deselect the contacts you want to export.
Check the export formats you would like for the email addresses and enter names for the files – Outlook distribution list, Outlook contact records, or CSV file.
Once you’ve created the list, you can import these contacts into any services that accept CSV files. Here are import links for a few popular sites (log into the sites before clicking the links below):
Also, as part of this release, we have included a beta of the ClearContext Contact Exporter, one of the prototype projects we mentioned in our product plan. I’m going to talk about that one in more detail in the next post…
The second edition of Michael Linenberger’s #1 best-selling Outlook book, 
In conjunction with Michael Linenberger, ClearContext has developed an 
Contacts and Documents – The IMS Dashboard currently pulls together emails, tasks, and appointments related to a project. Now we’re adding documents to that list – helping you deal with all of the attachments that flow through email. We’ve also extended the product to not only let you manage the tasks and activities around a project, but also find and interact with all the contacts related to a specific project or subject. Stay tuned to the blog for more details about other cool stuff we’ll be doing around contacts and documents in Outlook.
New Dashboards – The current IMS Dashboard is focused on projects. But lots of emails that clog up your inbox are notifications of some sort that can be analyzed, processed, and organized for you automatically. We don’t think you should have to manually process all the social networking requests, log file reports, corporate announcements or various other types of status and notification emails that arrive every day. We’ve developed another type of dashboard to automatically manage this sort of processing.
So how do you get to see all this cool new stuff? We’ll be opening up the beta in stages. If you’re interested in getting a look at early, pre-release software, send an email to beta at clearcontext dot com. We’ll put you on the top of the advance preview list and notify you when a beta version of IMS is ready for download. Honestly, I can’t wait for you to get your hands on this stuff and let us know what you think about it!
We have posted an update to our Vista Gadget, 
We’ve updated our