Another new technology on display at TechFest was a social e-mail program. “We’re working on the problem of e-mail overload and rethinking the way we think of e-mail,” said Shane Williams, a researcher at Microsoft.

He demonstrated a Web-based e-mail program, though its features could be built into a desktop e-mail product, that organizes e-mail around social groups. It examines who sends the e-mails and who is in the CC line and logically builds a group of people. End-users can tweak the groups too.

Users can name each group, which appear in boxes along the left column of the screen. Each box shows small thumbnail photos of each person and the subjects of recent e-mails from people in the group.

A “closet” at the bottom of the column contains groups that haven’t been active recently, but those groups pop up in the visible list above once they come in use again.

When a user clicks on a message, it displays the content in two columns, similar to a magazine page, Williams said. If the user starts typing, she will automatically be writing a reply in a small box on the screen, without having to open a separate window. Also, impending calendar items appear at the top of the screen, so that the user doesn’t have to switch to calendar view.