{"66411":{"#nid":"66411","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Taking Email Etiquette to the Next Level","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EWhen working with others in the office, most know\nit is better to approach a colleague who is relaxed and drinking a cup of\ncoffee versus a frazzled co-worker buried under a pile of paperwork.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUnfortunately, email doesn\u2019t offer users the\nsame social cues \u2013 until now.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech Assistant Professor of Computing Eric\nGilbert has developed software called courteous.ly,\u0026nbsp;a service that shows current\nuser email loads in real-time. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI think we\u2019re really good at the etiquette\npart when we have the cues that allow us to be polite,\u201d said Gilbert, a faculty\nmember in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. \u201cCourteous.ly\nhelps manage expectations and lets people choose to send mail when it\u2019s best\nfor you.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAvailable for download, courteous.ly currently works\nwith Google-based email, such as Gmail, which is used by 160 million people\nworldwide. Roughly 3 million businesses also use Google-hosted mail. Signing up\nfor courteous.ly is as easy as entering your email address and verifying a few\nlinks.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EOnce courteous.ly has access to a Gmail\naccount, it periodically checks the user\u2019s email load based on specific measurement\nparameters chosen by the user \u2013 unread messages in your inbox, total number of\nmessages in your inbox, or how much mail you\u2019ve recently sent. After an initial\n12-hour analysis, courteous.ly determines the user\u2019s email habits and what constitutes\n\u201clight,\u201d \u201cnormal\u201d or \u201chigh\u201d e-mail amount. It then updates the user\u2019s status of\nemail volume level every 10 minutes, which is reflected in an individualized\ncourteous.ly link.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe primary way to distribute a courteous.ly link\nis through the user\u2019s email signature. To see how busy a user is, an individual\nlooking to send an email would just need to click on the courteous.ly link \u2013\nbut even this extra step may go away in future iterations. For employees or individuals with high daily levels\nof incoming email, this tool provides another level of email management. For\nmarketers and others trying to get the attention of a particular email user, courteous.ly\npinpoints the most opportune times to send an email, affording the best chance\nof cutting through the clutter and having an email read.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn the future, Gilbert said he may develop blog\nwidgets that allow users to put their courteous.ly links on their blogs or\nwebsites. He may also color-code Gmail messages based on how overwhelmed a\nuser\u2019s inbox is for easier awareness.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EGilbert started courteous.ly to infuse email\nwith more social consideration. But now he\u2019s also studying whether the software\ncould actually reduce email loads by monitoring the users\u2019 accounts over\nseveral months to test its impact.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EGilbert hopes this is just one way to improve\ne-mail.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEmail is the Internet\u2019s first and most\nprolific social medium, going back all the way to the 1960s, and it\u2019s often\noverlooked and under-analyzed in comparison to newer channels,\u201d Gilbert said.\n\u201cThat makes it an attractive place to do research because everybody uses it but\nnot a lot of innovation has happened in a long time. There\u2019s definitely room\nfor improvement.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Interactive Computing Assistant Professor Eric Gilbert has developed software called courteous.ly, a service that shows current user email loads in real-time. \u003Cem\u003ESource: GT Communications \u0026amp; Marketing\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27174","created_gmt":"2011-06-07 11:34:01","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:08:49","author":"Mike Terrazas","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2011-06-07T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2011-06-07T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"654","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"13300","name":"Courteous.ly"},{"id":"8119","name":"email"},{"id":"13342","name":"Eric Gilbert"},{"id":"166848","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["liz.klipp@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}