ClearContext Corporate Blog

An MSNBC article by Eve Tahmincioglu has some interesting stats on information overload and it’s impact in the workplace:

"Turns out, seven out of 10 office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by information in the workplace, and more than two in five say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis — a provider of business information solutions."

I like this article because it hits on one of my mantras – good email management should be part of everyone’s core skill set:

"Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets, says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information brink: "exponential growth of the size of the information ‘haystack,’ the ubiquity and immediacy of digital communications, and the fact that professionals are not being provided with sufficient tools and training to help them keep pace with the growing information burden.""

I probably also like it because there’s a brief mention of ClearContext.  🙂  Read the article for more overload stats and some tips (on page 2) for alleviating the strain.

Fritz Nelson has posted an interview of ClearContext CEO Deva Hazarika over at Information Week:

[Direct video link here.]

Not being an Outlook user, it’s clear that Fritz can’t relate to the pain many of us were used to when trying to deal with our email without ClearContext, but he does do a good job explaining IMS features and functionality.  As a bonus, at the end of the video you get a little hint at some future plans for the product.

Over the weekend New York Magazine published a collection of articles on Peace and Quiet; various ways New Yorkers can take a break from the bustle of The City.

Included in the feature are seven tips on becoming an E-mail Ninja.  I’m partial to #5 for obvious reasons:

"Hire a virtual butler. Add-on applications like ClearContext act like gatekeepers, automatically rearranging messages in order of importance."

I stumbled across this Ferris Research article on measuring email response time and email SLA’s at Ferris Research.  David Sengupta basically says that using email response time as a metric is a sure fire way to develop unproductive work habits in the organization:

“Being hyper-responsive to email around the clock suggests that you live an interrupt-driven work life and that you likely have a hard time concentrating for prolonged periods of time. Your overall productivity is likely to be reduced as a result, making you less valuable.

…

Many people are intensely productive but block hours or even days of email-free time, in order to focus on priority projects. When you hear managers or others in the company suggesting that there is some inherent value in someone’s ability to be instantly responsive to any message that comes their way, or in someone’s ability to process a massive amount of email, think again.”

This is, of course, exactly what we have been saying.  Focus on your projects rather than your messages and you’ll be a lot more successful in the long run.

There have been some new articles and reviews written about IMS v4 over the last couple of weeks:

Email’s Friendly Fire – November 27, 2007
Rebecca Buckman – Wall Street Journal
"ClearContext… uses algorithms to quickly analyze a user’s email to determine which contacts and messages are the most important." 

Email Overload – November 27, 2007
Gui Cremerius
"Who doesn’t suffer from email overload these days? Even my 75 year old mother sometimes claims she’s getting too much email!" 

ClearContext : pour mieux organiser ses e-mails dans Outlook. – November 26, 2007
Stéphanie Renault – 01net.
"IMSv4, édité par ClearContext, permet de s’y retrouver facilement face aux avalanches quotidiennes de messages, grâce à des règles simples de tri, de priorité, de suivi des alertes…" 

ClearContext IMS Review: How to Manage Email – November 25, 2007
Bill Masella – Projects Possible
"With each release of this product I find that I am becoming more and more of a fan and my Outlook life is now so entrenched in it’s use that I couldn’t even imagine what Outlook would be like without it." 

Annoyed By Your Boss’s Email? No Problem. – November 17, 2007
Neil Smithline – My Geekdom
"All-in-all, CCIMS is a wonderful tool." 

ClearContext Information Management System Pro 4.0 – November 11, 2007
Heinz Tschabitscher – email.about.com
"Version 4 adds a helpful Dashboard that collects emails, tasks and appointments on a project basis. Also new are ClearContext alerts for messages from certain people or in a particular thread — as well as a handy Do Not Disturb button that turns off Outlook’s email notifications for a while."

Email continues to be a hot topic in the news! A great Wall Street Journal article on email technologies being developed to help people deal with email overload mentions ClearContext along with a couple of other companies also developing Outlook-based products, Seriosity and Xobni.  The article focuses on the message management capabilities of IMS and includes a couple of good examples from ClearContext customers.  Deva was interviewed for the article and has written some follow-up thoughts at his blog, Email Dashboard.

There’s quite a bit that’s been written about our release over the last few days.  Take a look for some hints on our future product plans… 

ClearContext Aims To Untangle Your Outlook Inbox
David Needle – Enterprise News
"If you use Outlook, but have trouble keeping track of the glut of e-mail the Microsoft program collects, a solution may be at hand." 

E-mail overload? ClearContext promises solution for Outlook users
Eric Lai – ComputerWorld
"Version 4 of Information Management System (IMS) gives users an integrated dashboard view of all the e-mails, appointments and contacts related to a given project — something that ‘fundamentally hasn’t been possible in Outlook before,’ said ClearContext CEO Deva Hazarika." 

ClearContext – Helping you with email overload
Chris Morrison – VentureBeat
"So ClearContext helps give some structure to the user’s day. It allows new email notifications to be selectively turned on or off, giving the user breathing room to work on the actual projects related to their email communications. At other times, users are encouraged to go through and deal with their prioritized emails."

ClearContext IMS
Steve Parker – Internet Fork
"If you are a Microsoft Outlook user, ClearContext is a godsend."