Outbox, as a reminder, would collect and scan your postal mail on your behalf, allowing you to view it online.
Google, whose Android operating system is the main rival to iPhones, makes most of its revenue from selling advertising, and it does scan your e-mail to sell relevant ads.
Will it automatically scan your e-mail, realize that your partner is on the flight and that you promised to be at the terminal, and offer to book you a taxi to the airport to go and meet them?
If you just want to space out and the lady in the aisle seat won't let you, Ms. O'Connor suggests politely explaining that you need to prepare for work by finishing the paper or scanning your e-mail messages.
And if the idea of your boss surreptitiously scanning your e-mail messages strikes you as invasive, imagine how you'll feel when you begin each working day by having a small electronic probe -- or "potty plug" -- inserted into your transverse colon.
How many of you use Gmail, the service that actively scans your e-mail to sell ads?
After installation, the extension scans your inbox for mail you received in the last 30 days, then allows you to check off which brand emails you want to see visualized in your Gmail sidebar.
For instance, Alto Mail scans your inbox to pull flight and shipment details so that you can view the status of your next flight or incoming package on the Dashboard screen.
Because an application has read your e-mail, scanned your calendar, tracked your location, parsed traffic patterns and figured out you need an extra half-hour to drive to the meeting.
Because an application has read your e-mail, scanned your calendar, tracked your location, parsed traffic patterns and figured out that you need an extra half-hour to drive to the meeting.
Computers do the scanning -- dumbly, robotically and with no understanding the words -- just the way your current e-mail provider scans your messages for spam and viruses.
