MIT App Connects The Dots Of Your Life From Your Gmail Data

Many of us have been using email accounts for ages. Given such extensive associations, a significant portion of our lives is reflected by the contents of our inbox, through the emails received and sent. The MIT Media Lab has now created a web app called ‘Immersion’ which gathers metadata from your email account and then presents an interactive, people-centric view of your email life.


Immersion

Naturally, the app requires your permission before it can access your email account, and works only with Gmail. Once you give it the green signal to access your Gmail account, it looks at specific details such as the names of the senders, recipients as well as the timestamps on your emails.

Interestingly, the tool doesn’t even scour through the contents of the emails. By merely sifting through the aforementioned particulars, Immersion is able to gauge the extent to which you are connected to different people. Based on this information, it then presents a people-based, interactive and visual presentation of your account.

According to Cesar Hidalgo, who is among the creators of the app, “All of this data is about people. Data basically doesn’t make sense without humans. When you see it all together, it is, in a way, an out-of-body experience.”

Immersion is probably the first app of its kind and shows that even without accessing the exact contents of a given email, a web-based tool can help a user keep an eye on his email account. You can access the ‘Immersion’ web app on the link posted below.

Source: Immersion

Courtesy: The Verge

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Salman

Salman Latif is a software engineer with a specific interest in social media, big data and real-world solutions using the two.Other than that, he is a bit of a gypsy. He also writes in his own blog. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter .

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