With the world’s in-boxes overflowing with unread messages, researchers at Microsoft are offering up a tool they hope will help people sort through the morass.

The software maker this week released a free utility that aims to sort e-mail in a new way: It can organize messages not just by how recent they are, but also by whether the recipient knows the sender well.

The program, known as SNARF, bases its approach on the fact that people tend to interact more with messages from those they care about.

Microsoft Research’s SNARF tool can sort e-mails in several ways. It distinguishes, among other things, whether mail was sent directly to someone, or if they were part of a distribution list.

Source: News.com