For the last few weeks I've been using the open source email filter PopFile to help me organize my incoming email. All of my work and personal email ends up in the same box, which makes it a lot of work to plow through. And since some of my addresses are plastered across websites around the world I get a lot of Spam. A lot. Help was needed. And PopFile came to the rescue.

PopFile uses statistical methods (plus a few other tricks) to categorize mail into "buckets" that you define. For example, I have a "store" bucket for all email having to do with orders for our store - whether they are payment notifications or inquiries about orders. I also have a "spam" bucket (of course) for all those nice people wanting to help me improve my sex life. PopFile assigns a bucket to each incoming email. When it gets it wrong I tell it using a simple web interface, and next time it does a better job. It's easy to install, though maybe not so easy for total computer naifs, and gets better at sorting messages every day. These days it almost never misses spam, and I've been able to introduce more subtle buckets like "praise" for those messages that say something nice. Those are the ones I read first every day.

Highly recommended.