Intelligent software aims to give users peace of mind
Seattle PI | at | by Mike
Most people wouldn't want a message from work disrupting their day at the beach. But Eric Horvitz was so happy when it happened to him that he took out a camera and captured the moment in a photo.
The e-mail message had been singled out and sent to the Microsoft senior researcher's mobile phone by a special program that he and others in his group developed.
The message for Horvitz was from a journal editor who hadn't received an abstract the Microsoft researcher had sent her. Examining the message, the system considered a long list of factors, including Horvitz's relationship to the sender, the length of the message, key phrases, dates and times mentioned in the text, whether the message was written in past or present tense and whether it included questions.