Mozilla has launched a software project designed to let people better manage the ever more voluminous stream of messages coming from sources such as Twitter and Facebook into their e-mail.

Raindrop is not another e-mail client, however, said Bryan Clark, the design lead for Mozilla messaging. Mozilla describes it as a "mini Web server" that is installed on a PC and collects conversations and messages from a variety of sources and then intelligently sorts them.

The purpose of Raindrop is to allow people to have clearer view of messages they're getting and not let the personal ones be obscured in an e-mail box among, for example, a morass of Facebook or Flickr notifications. It will also be able to handle notifications from YouTube, blogs and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.

"E-mail was already overloaded" even before Web services such as social networks started sending updates to users, said Clark in a video posted to the Raindrop Web site.

More: http://pcworld.com/article/174220/