-Submitted by Laurie Riedman, Xerox public relations consultant
I’ve written before about the tenuous relationship I have with my overflowing inbox. Part of it is that I simply can’t keep track of everything that’s in there. I hate to admit it but sometimes my inability to be “on top” of the documents, emails, RSS feeds – and whatever else that lands there — means it takes me longer to respond to clients and I may not appear as “smart” as I could be on conference calls or in meetings.
Sometimes I think the only way out is to hire my own personal assistant who understands what I need, how I think and can easily find everything I need so I can be smarter and do a better job. Since hiring is out of the question– I wondered if Meshin, a new Outlook plug-in launched this week at Tech Crunch might help.
Meshin is a Xerox funded start-up company located at PARC, a Xerox Company. The new tool, also called Meshin, promises to make me look really smart really quickly because it reaches beyond keywords and gathers information via meaning and context. It is the first time semantic technology has been applied to a search tool that scans not only email messages but also RSS feeds and social networks.
Sounds perfect….a tool that can actually think like I do. Ok, a little scary but promising.
For example, recently a company I had done some work for a few years ago called me to talk about bidding on a new project. I don’t know about you – but I can’t remember what happened last week let alone the specifics of what I did for a client two years ago. So rather than spend hours combing thru files, my inbox or searching the web to get up to speed for the meeting – I bet Meshin could help by gathering the relevant information fast.
Check out the press release in our newsroom. to download the beta and try it out. I’m going to. After all – Meshin may just be able to give my inbox a brain! Now that would be something. I’ll keep you posted.*
*Updated November 21, 2017.
