Mail User Interface suggestion...

I was discussing Mail interfaces with my friend last night - about how much Yahoo!'s AJAXy client sucks - I only use it because it is marginally faster overall for reading mail, but it looks (and performs) just like Outlook - UGGH.

I came in to work today and looked at the list of email presented by the client. It look something like this:

Sender	Subject	Date
Kmart	Super Special Deal	Today
Julie	Save the Environment	Today
James E. Lee	Something cool	Today
Buy.com	Super special on HD TVs	Today
Crutchfield	Does your HDTV sound good?	Today
Cindy Gould	Something from mom	Today

Quick - there's two emails in the list I actually care about - which is it?

Right, the one from my friend James, the other from my mom. The other emails are ads, which I don't consider Spam because they are from companies or organizations I have previously had contact with, and so I let them into my email - though I usually delete all that stuff. But it was annoying that amongst the clutter, there was one thing I cared about and the rest I didn't.

MAKE IT MORE OBVIOUS, STUPID

Here's what strikes me - there's an attribute the email I care about that the other emails don't have - and that attribute is trivially detected by - you guessed it - a computer.

Notice that sentence - what stood out? The word attribute, right? Why - because I highlighted it. If I can do that, couldn't the server do the same for the email I care about?

So what's the attribute - well my friend James happens to be IN MY ADDRESSBOOK. Bingo - let's have a feature that highlights emails from people in my addressbook.

This is so straightforward, I am shocked that we have had email for 20 years and to my knowledge this simple, straightforward feature has NEVER been implemented.

Let's take a look at how it might look if it were highlighted:

Sender	Subject	Date
Kmart	Super Special Deal	Today
Julie	Save the Environment	Today
James E. Lee	Something cool	Today
Buy.com	Super special on HD TVs	Today
Crutchfield	Does your HDTV sound good?	Today
Cindy Gould	Something from mom	Today

Ok, quick, which email(s) do I care about?

What do you think? Do you like this approach?