While I was at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, I was fortunate enough to have Tom Igoe teach one my favorite classes, Instruction to Physical Computing.

He's created an email clock and then a second one to improve on the first. The clocks track the amount of messages in an inbox and speedsup as more kbs of email arrive. Like Tom, I check my email compulsively throughout the day. I'm pretty diligent about keeping my inbox contained and tend to get really nervous when there are more than 50 messages in it. I'm always amazed and stunned when I see inboxes with thousands of messages. In order to keep his anxiety at bay, he designed his email clocks to "compulsively check my email for me, and worry over the amount continually coming in, so I wouldn't have to."

Perfect.

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