ClearContext looks really interesting. Unfortunately, they do not yet support IMAP e-mail which was a deal breaker for me. If you use a single e-mail account in Outlook and it’s either a POP3 or Exchange account, it does a very good job of helping you stay on top of your Inbox.

One correction: I use ClearContext with at least a half-dozen POP3 accounts, and it handles them just fine. The only restriction is that new messages have to come into the Inbox to be processed.

I’ve heard many, many complaints about Outlook and IMAP and have personally experienced the horrendous performance that is the most common complaint. (I may have found a fix; stay tuned.)

But isn’t the whole concept of IMAP incompatible with add-ins like this? All I see are headers when I look at the contents of an IMAP folder. After the message is downloaded, it can be acted on, but before it’s downloaded, it doesn’t really “exist,” does it? So how could it be assigned to a topic or put into a folder?

The New York Times published an interesting article (requires free registration) on the avalanche of email workers must get through as they return from vacation.