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Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Starts New Email Filtering Company
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Jason Mick/DailyTech
June 23, 2009
Xiant will provide “smart” filters for email clients such as Microsoft outlook
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen may be ridiculously rich with a fortune of $10B USD, but like his buddy Bill Gates there’s two things that keep him hungry for more. The first is philanthropy. Like Mr. Gates, Mr. Allen has devoted much to helping those in need. The second is a love for new technology.
Mr. Allen has launched a new company, driven by that love, that looks to return to his roots, somewhat as well. The new company, called Xiant, will offer “smart” organization and filtering software for email inboxes, including for Microsoft Outlook, one of the flagship products of the company he founded years before.
The company’s first offering will be Xiant Filer, which is compatible with Microsoft Outlook. You train the new software to automatically drop different kinds of email or emails from specific users into different folders — for example, “work”, “family”, “school”. The software aims to make the somewhat daunting task of managing a busy mailbox easier. Xiant claims that the more you use the software, the more accurate it becomes at predicting your email organizational desires.
Final prices have not yet been disclosed, but a beta version of the software is available here for free.
Chris Purcell, VP of Mr. Allen’s Vulcan Technologies investment firm, which is backing Xiant says the software was a pet project of Mr. Allen’s that grew into much more. He states, “Xiant Filer started as a personal project to help Paul keep up with heavy e-mail traffic. It worked so well we all started using it, which led us to take it to market.”
He adds that its fitting that the launch be on a Microsoft OS. He states, “”articleBody">It won’t be lost on his former colleagues that Paul has returned to the software world with something that improves on one of Microsoft’s keystone products."
Follow-ups are planned to the Outlook release. States the company, “There are already more tools under development to help computer users be more productive, organized, and better connected with their stuff.”
While Xiant’s offering may be seen by some as a friendly gesture to Microsoft, the new software will actually bring some friendly competition, sparring with offerings from Microsoft and other smaller startups such as Xobni.
© 2009, DailyTech_
