ReadWriteWeb

Want to escape your email? These days, who doesn't? Email is one of the easiest technologies to use, which leads to an unfortunate side effect: we get too much of it. The information overload crisis has gotten out of hand and is now at the point where it's interfering with the way business operates. This problem is no longer just an inconvenience, it's a real financial concern. In the U.S. alone, $650 billion per year is the cost of lost productivity, according to IORG. But what can be done?

One of the software programs mentioned at this year's IORG conference (see our coverage here) was SmartDesktop. This program uses machine intelligence to automatically organize your information by project so you can quickly find what you need. In addition to organizing your emails and files created by desktop software, the beta version of this program also works with Google Docs and Zoho. These items appear in Smart Desktop as a "web resources," which allow you to quickly retrieve online documents without having to hunt through your browser bookmarks to find them.

On July 15th, the Information Overload Research Group (IORG) held their inaugural conference in New York City. The group, whose founders include IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and a dozen other companies and academic institutions, is on a mission to find solutions to today's information overload problems. In attendance at this first conference were both representatives from from the above companies as well as others from all over the world. Now that this event has ended, lets see what we've learned.