We are all faced with the seemingly infinite distractions living in the cloud that take us away from actual work. Email and instant messaging, which sometimes are and sometimes are not for work purposes, are the most common examples. Other obvious ones are corporate intranets, fresh blog postings, and other sites that update frequently. With that in mind, researchers at the University of Maryland and researchers at Microsoft are studying new potential types of interfaces that gauge individual workflow and adjust distractions accordingly, The New York Times reported this morning. One idea is that rather than hearing that chime every time a new email comes in, a user could be sent an email alert based on current workflow and even the importance of the incoming message. I admit that in clicking from page 1 to page 2 of the article I switched over to check my email and found only more spam this time, so then I launched the Word document I used to write this post and let that app fire up, while I finished reading the Times story. Software Development