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E-mail notifications, phone calls, text messages, instant messages and activity stream alerts and other distractions are all part of the modern workplace. It's been long known that interruptions and multi-tasking reduce worker productivity - but by how much?

According to research sponsored by Harmon.ie, a company that sells a solution for integrating Microsoft SharePoint with e-mail (coverage), distractions cost businesses $10,375 per person, per year.

We've covered recently how overwhelmed knowledge workers feel by information. A new survey reveals that c-level executives are no exception to the rule. And yet, executives are always craving more data. The survey, commissioned by Avanade (an Accenture subsidiary dedicated specifically to Microsoft technology) and conducted by Kelton Research, had 543 respondents - all c-level executives across several industries from 17 countries across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

LexisNexus recently conducted survey of white-collar workers in five countries (the United States, China, South Africa, United Kingdom and Australia) on the subject of information overload. According to the press release, the survey found most professionals have had an increase in information they must process since the economic downturn and that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all information they receive each day is irrelevant to their job. Also, 51% of workers spend half their work days managing and processing information rather than using that information to do their jobs. We asked last week about what enterprise 2.0 tools you use in your organizations. This week, we'd like to know how well those tools are working out for you.

Mozilla announced today a new add-on to its email program Thunderbird, a button called Mute Thread. It's a simple way to say "I'm not interested in this right now, but I might come back to it later." It's an alternative to unsubscribing forever and it's a very smart idea.

If everything had a button like that, people would feel comfortable subscribing to more things in the first place. Can you imagine if your cable TV provider said "this package includes 100 channels - but you have to watch every single one of them every day"? You wouldn't buy cable TV if that was the case. Why then does subscription on Facebook, Twitter or RSS have to mean all content all the time?

Every single day, people send about 294 billion emails and the average knowledge worker now spends close to 13 hours per week on managing email. Over the last few months, we have seen a number of tools that help users to manage their email in Google's Gmail more effectively. Today, Google itself is joining the fray with Priority Inbox. Once activated, Priority Inbox splits your Gmail inbox into three sections: important messages, starred messages and everything else. The system automatically learns which messages are most likely to be important to you and places them at the top of your email queue.

Silentale, the searchable archive of all your email and Web-based communication, is now available as a mobile app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Like the desktop version of the service, the new app provides a "360 degree view of your contacts," explains the company, including conversation history with email recipients, Facebook friends, Twitter, Google and Highrise contacts and LinkedIn connections.

Silentale, the new web service that backs up and archives your contacts and messages from all the communication platforms you use, has now launched into public beta as of this morning. The online application is part universal inbox, part social CRM tool and part contact management solution. But unlike some of its competitors, the best part about Silentale is that it archives your messages - all of your messages, including every single email, Twitter reply or direct message, Facebook message and more and then makes those searchable from one location.

Researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) are developing a new Twitter client application that aims to derive meaning from the next-ending influx of tweets. The application, called "Eddi," automatically groups tweets for you into topics mentioned either explicitly or, unlike most Twitter clients that also provide topic browsing, implicitly. The end result is a Twitter app you can use to quickly find the popular discussions within your own personal Twitter stream, either by search, tag cloud, timeline or category list. It even suggests tweets you might be interested in reading, helping you sort the signal from the noise.

A new service from AwayFind lets you ignore your inbox without worrying that you're going to miss an important message. It's one of those ideas that seems so obvious, you're left wondering "why didn't someone think of this already?"

With the new service and its optional web browser plugin, you're able to configure alerts for critical, "can't miss" email messages and can choose to have those alerts sent to you via instant message, Twitter, SMS text message or even a phone call.

A couple of years ago, the new launch from Webwalks, a universal inbox, news aggregator, password manager and kitchen sink-type application would have caught my eye. I'd rush out to try it, merging my multiple accounts under its one roof then wait to see how well my life improved, how much time I saved. But today, I'm more ambivalent about these sorts of applications. The concept of a universal inbox for tracking everything under the sun now leaves me cold.

That's not to say that merging of social networks with the inbox in and of itself is a bad idea - Google Buzz, Xobni, and Outlook's new social connector all offer innovative ways to augment the inbox experience. But there's a key difference between these apps and those promising a "universal inbox" - they come to you, in the inbox you already know and love.