MIT Technology Review Looks at NRC's Work on the Universal In-box

MIT Technology Review Looks at NRC's Work on the Universal In-box

MIT Technology Review writes about the work that Nokia Research Center is doing to bring about the "universal inbox" and the challenges of managing disparate message systems such as email, text messages, social network status updates and more.

"The universal in-box brings together all those communications into one place so the user does not need to check separate apps," says Rafael Ballagas, a researcher at Nokia Research Center, in Palo Alto, California.

That makes it easier to track and carry out conversations that span different kinds of messaging. For example, it would be simple to see that someone responded to a Twitter update with a text message. It would also be possible to seamlessly switch methods of communication, and reply to a person's latest Facebook update by e-mailing them.

As a result, users can think less about the medium of communication, and more about the people they are contacting and what they want to say, says Tim Sohn, another researcher on the project. That's particularly valuable on a mobile device with a small screen, he says.

The universal in-box is made possible by cloud software running on a distant server. The software gathers up a person's messages from a device and connects with Web services such as Facebook. Processing these messages has to be done in the cloud to avoid overtaxing the limited computing and battery resources of a cell phone.

For more from this article, please see the original article at Technology Review, for more information about this research and more in the area of mobile user experiences, check out Nokia Research Center's IDEA team page here.