If Yahoo’s Launch stations can be programmed according to mood, you’d think Outlook could do the same. Filtering email addresses into different levels of “productivity” or “focus” moods should be easy enough, no? In fact, given the obviousness of this idea, one wonders how productive those Microsoft offices REALLY are…

Ten bucks says the folks in Washington nearly crash the Yahoo server every morning as they check their fantasy football stats… Speaking of which… Gotta go…

I can’t believe there’s not a way to associate notifications with groups of people.

So, theoretically, I could tell Mail.app to gather and hold all email for n minutes without interruption unless it’s from group foo or bar in my address book or has a subject containing my secret interruption keyword, etc.

Basically we need smart folders and smart playlists for notifications. I can do without the computer reading my mind; I just need more granularity on who gets special interrupt access. :-)

Instead of configuring notification intervals and filters in each application, why not have something like Growl that filters and queues up received notifications for delivery?

You could even create notification profiles for different situations, such as “Workin’ it”, “Oh, Titus, I’m bored!”, “LMTFA”, etc. Since notifications are processed external to each application, you wouldn’t need to reconfigure each one when you want more or less interruptions at different intervals.

This would also be a way to provide filtering and queueing functionality to apps that support might not support it.

@Merlin: I believe that what you’re asking Mail.app to do already exists. Mine is set up as follows:

1. Set up group foo or bar in Address Book.
2. In the General preferences window, set “New mail sound” to “None.” This will prevent Mail from notifying you with a sound on every message.
3. In the Rules preferences, create a new rule (add rule).
4. Make the rule say: If "any" of the following conditions are met: "Sender is member of Group" “foo” Perform the following actions: "Play Sound" "New Mail Sound"

You are now free to work away and will not be disturbed with a peep from Mail (or a ping, pop, purr… whatever sound you use to notify you) unless someone from group foo sends you a message.

The only thing missing is the easy ability to turn this filter on and off. Personally, I’ve found that I can just leave it this way all the time and I don’t seem to have any trouble remembering to check the other lower-priority mail.

This article mentions laptops with locations settings. I am new to mac and am wondering if this is an option on my mac that I just can’t find, or if this is in reference to the Windows world I have so happily given up. Also…what is growl? What other options are there to do the same kind of thing?