Cross-post from http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?p=1052
Google is about to release a feature that I am looking forward to: Gmail Priority Inbox. It is supposed to make important emails more visible in our overloaded inbox.
A few years ago we had lots of spam: the spam filter was born and saved us from insanity. Nowadays, email overload is the problem and hopefully Gmail Priority Inbox will help.
How does it work? It compares incoming emails to similar older ones and increases an “interest” value based on the number of reads and replies. The highest ranking emails will wear a visual cue to make them stand out. There is probably a lot of Bayesian statistical computation going on as there is in spam filters, but I am just guessing here.