Anymails

Both Josh and I have written in the past about the open-source image and animation programming language called Processing. In those earlier posts, you’ll find links to several neat-looking doodads made with Processing. The real trick with any new technology, though, is to use it for truly something useful rather than just “neat.”

Today, our friends at NOTCOT spotted what is surely a step in that direction. The discovery is Anymails, a program written by Carolin Horn and Florian Jenett that forms a visual representation of your email inbox as, basically, a computerized Petrie dish. The program comes as a result of Horn’s MFA thesis project, which was titled “Natural Metaphor for Information Visuzalization” (I have serious thesis envy right now). This is kind of hard to explain"”and you may as well just watch the videos for yourself on the website"”but basically Anymails turns your inbox into a colony of microbes that swim and squirm their way around your monitor, acting out metaphorically what is going on informationally in your inbox. The reason I say that the project is useful, is that it provides a non-numerical way to understand the flow of information. Right now it might be easier to just look at a number if you want to know how many unread messages you have. But what if you’re trying to discover whether emails from work or emails from friends generate a greater strain on your mental resources? The potential of a visual representation such as Anymails becomes obvious. Plus it’s, you know, totally fun to watch.