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Every email in the Inbox Garden has a dynamic icon next to the more traditional information.
The icon next to a new email will simply look like a square of grass. If you read the email, and decided not to delete it, Inbox Garden would assume that it was an email that you liked, so it would change
the icon to a flower. The longer the email stayed in your inbox, the more the flower would grow.
Conversely, if you chose to ignore an email, Inbox Garden would assume that you didn't want it (e.g. it was spam) and would begin to grow a weed on it's icon. The longer you left it, the bigger the weed would get.
You could then choose to weed your garden (getting rid of individual weed emails) or sprinkle weed killer on your inbox, removing all weeds at once.
If you have several emails from one person in your email, they will always have the same colour flower, although the initial colour chosen would be randomised, so that you get a nice surprise when it blossoms or blooms.
Where a normal inbox gives you view options, such as "sort by sender" or "sort by day", Inbox Garden has the additional option to "view my garden" where all information is removed except for the floral icons, arranged into a beautiful garden.
Please note that I've resisted the temptation to call this idea "Windows Box".
Spam Summary Visualisations
http://www.halfbake...ry_20Visualisations Related enough that I don't feel bad for the shameless past-life self promotion. [calum, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
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Annotation:
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Nice :)
You could also have other variants, say animals instead of flowers, in a zoo/petshop/tamagotchi world. |
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{B}
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no idea what this will look like :) |
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Not sure what to think of this. I like the idea, but it doesn't fit with the way I use my inbox. I don't leave stuff in my inbox, I sort it into subfolders (sometimes automatically using Outlook rules). And I don't just leave spam there, I delete it immediately. So it wouldn't be of much use to me, or anyone else who uses their inbox as a temporary holding area. |
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(((( )))))))
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You've got weeds!</AOL voice> |
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But what if you don't delete it because it's for work, and you're putting it off? |
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I think your inbox should start out as a pretty lawn, and as long as you keep it orderly (less than 12 messages in it; nothing that's been there for 5 years), then it stays pretty and little flowers bloom. |
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But if it becomes a mess, weeds and brambles start growing; then thornbushes start blocking key messages making it hard to get to them. |
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sleep for a hundred years? yes, pleese. |
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[phundug] Maybe you could change long-term emails into garden ornaments? My personal favourite would be a sundial. |
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Been thinking about a seasonal add-on, too. Your Inbox Garden in Spring, Autumn, Summer and Winter. Also, I like the idea of garden warnings. "This email contains an image which could potentially unleash frost/greenfly into your Inbox Garden. Do you trust the sender?" |
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That's wonderful. I love it. + |
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[UB] I agree that Inbox Garden wouldn't work for the more procedural minds amongst us. Besides which, I've always imagined you to have a weedless, perfectly manicured lawn anyway. And I imagine that [waugs] replaced his garden with a more uniform and practical tarmac covering years ago. It's just a hunch. |
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"With septic tank weeds,
and porno doc leaves,
And friends' roses making things beau."
Contrived, but it sums up today's flotsum and jetsum. |
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please [Fishrat] may I have some more? |
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More septic tank weeds? That's a bit weird, Em! |
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To provide that multi-media experience you could add the sounds of the garden. Along with the beautiful blooms would come the gentle 'cheep' of birdies and the fluttering of butterfly wings. With weeds you could add the noise of passing traffic, lawnmowers etc. |
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An email from somebody you don't like (set in your preferences, of course) might sound like an annoying wasp after your lemonade... |
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This is one of the more interesting ideas I have heard in a very long time. I'd like to see this implemented. It would probably be pretty simple to do as an extension in Mozilla/Netscape. This really models the way I use my mail, too. I very often will go for days without opening some e-mails. Maybe the "weed" mails could also be used in a weak junk-mail filter, so that similar messages arrive with weeds already growing? |
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Great idea. I love it! My garden/inbox would be a total jungle though, I can never be bothered to chuck out spam. |
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Ah, but that's what the weed killer is for... |
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Brilliant idea. Don't 4get us MacUsers : )
I keep email 4 YEARS. I'd have jungle
monsters.... maybe they'd have fruit.... |
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Viruses come in the form of snakes |
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I like snapdragons. Can I have snapdragons? |
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Depends who/what you're trying to mate with, [DF] |
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If you organize all your mail into subfolders, it could have the icon of neatly trimmed, rigidly watered and regularly weeded grass. New messages could be uncut grass with dandelions poking there vicious heads out. |
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Pastry for such a simple, interesting,
creative idea. I envision a user interface
full of interesting organic OpenGL things. |
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