Focus Research, Inc.
2000-03-31
Buckminster Fuller [Bald 1996] (inventor of the geodesic dome and the person after whom buckminsterfullerene, C60, and fullerenes in general are named) kept his notebooks and correspondence in a large chronological file, which he called his chronofile [BFI]. The primary dimension of organization for this historical information record was time. There have been experimental computer information management systems that use time as the primary dimension along which information is organized. They supplement the chronological ordering with searching and indexing to support topic and keyword searches.
Today, most professionals have at least one email account, and many people have multiple email accounts over time, or even at the same time. In business, it can be important to keep all incoming and outgoing email messages around in case one needs to refer to them again in the future. However, when upgrading computer hardware or software, such as installing a new operating system, or —even worse— changing email programs, it is necessary to transfer these historical messages (or resign oneself to losing potentially useful information). Also, it is easy to run into storage space problems keeping all this historical information around on a personal computer.
Further, some email programs don't keep the incoming mail verbatim with attachments as they were received (for example as standard MIME attachments in the mail); and, some programs don't copy the attachments to outgoing messages into the "Sent" folder, so if you go back later to look at a message you sent someone, you may not be able to bring up the attached file if you've moved or deleted the original from your hard drive. Worse, if you didn't move or delete it, but modified the file instead, you'll be fooled, since you'll actually see the latest version from that location on your hard drive, not the file as it was sent.
Chronofile® solves these and other problems. Users create accounts at http://chronofile.com/, and enter their internet email account information (SMTP, IMAP, and POP) for all of their accounts. Chronofile® periodically downloads all the incoming mail into its servers, from which it will never be deleted. Similarly, email sent via Chronofile® instead of via other services will be archived forever. The issues discussed above are solved. With Chronofile® users always have access to every email they ever sent or received since signing up with the service (and, they can even upload the email data from their current email programs if they like). Sophisticated searching and rule- based categorization are possible.
Strong security and privacy policies and technologies will be required. Value-added capabilities can be provided via a web email interface. It would be possible to use any IMAP capable email client to browse the historical archive also. The service can be made to operate just like normal ISP-based email through the use of POP and SMTP, except that when messages are "deleted" after being retrieved via POP, they aren't truly deleted from the server. Then, the web or another interface can be used separately only when retrieval of older emails is desired.
The idea for Chronofile® grew out of personal experiences and email troubles of the author, but it is clear that other people have related desires. For example, Marc Briand (Editor-in-Chief of C/C++ Users' Journal) had this to say [CUJ] about using email logs in an archival mode:
Within my pathology lurks at least a half-baked excuse for hoarding messages. That is, I regularly use my email client as an ad-hoc project manager and contacts database. I can do this because my email client has a nifty search facility — far niftier than Windows Explorer. What I'd really like to see is an email client that also serves as web browser, project manager, and personal knowledge base, all rolled into one. If you start selling one and making big bucks, you can send royalty checks to Editor-in-Chief, c/o C/C++ Users Journal ...
This hints at the broader possibilities once long-term complete historical email archives are available:
For example, threaded viewing and threaded summarization would be very valuable organizational tools to track negotiations and issue resolutions.
While the advanced searching and summarization capabilities are a major value-add for users that aren't "packrats", the integration and historical preservation of all email is still the primary new capability. Without history, advanced searching and summarizing is interesting, but not as valuable. Chronofile® is like a data warehouse for email; It is important to keep all messages because one doesn't know in advance which questions (and therefore, which messages) will become important in the future. Categorization of email by means both automated ("filters") and manual ("tags") are important, but it is still the complete historical record that is the enabler.
Progress so far:
To bring this to market, the next steps are:
Giagehas a product called WebSpace that is a web-integrated information management application. They don't provide server-based value-added capabilities, though, which is the advantage of Chronofile®.
The revenue model needs to accommodate both small-scale and large-scale users. Barrier to entry for small-scale users should be low, with a simple pricing model. A flat rate per month for monthly volume up to a certain point would cover eternal storage of data, and access to basic access and organization tools. For professionals with higher data rates and more advanced organization capabilities, a second tier pricing scheme would apply. Finally, for companies that want the capabilities of Chronofile® for all their employees, there will be an option to license the software to run on their own computer.
Some other additional capabilities that could be built for future versions of Chronofile® are:
Another advanced email capability, which could be implemented as a follow-on to the Chronofile® technology described above, is to create a system wherein spam simply does not work. With appropriate (challenging) technology it is possible to create a system that will "bounce" (or simply drop) any message that is not from an approved sender and does not contain a payment token.
It will not matter whether spammers get a person's email address or not, since while there is nothing to stop them from sending as many messages as they desire, the messages will bounce unless they include a payment token in exchange for the recipient looking at the message. Users can set the payment threshold based on their current tolerance for receiving unsolicited messages. If a user gets such a message with a payment token and feels that the message represents a valuable service, he can forego accepting the token, thus encouraging the sender to send more messages like it.
This powerful idea has been discussed but has not yet seen a mass-market implementation. It has even been used too good effect in the science fiction book EarthWeb [STIE 1999].
Effective implementation of this capability requires open standards, since interoperability with people that don't have special software would be a requirement. There is however a strong network effect to be had when many people have email clients that are payment- aware.
For more information on Chronofile® please contact Focus Research, Inc. at:
Focus Research, Inc.
P.O. Box 629
Cupertino, CA 95015
mailto:gregor@focusresearch.com
http://www.focusresearch.com/
[BALD 1996] Baldwin, J. BuckyWorks: Buckmister Fuller's Ideas for Today, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1996. ISBN 0-471-12953-4.
[BFI] Buckmister Fuller Institute. Chronofile, web site.
http://www.bfi.org/chronofile.htm
[CUJ] C/C++ User's Journal. Editor's Forum, 2000-04 issue.
http://www.cuj.com/corner/forum.html
[STIE 1999] Stiegler, Marc. EarthWeb, Baen (Simon & Schuster), New York, 1999. ISBN 0-671-57809-X.
Copyright © 2008 Gregor N. Purdy. All rights reserved.