Sorry, I forgot the attachment! 18 Jun 2007

Mark Dredze, John Blitzer and Fernando Pereira of the Computer and Information Sciences Department at University of Pennsylvania, are trying to solving a problem that all of us are familiar with: the forgotten email attachment.

From their recent paper "Sorry, I Forgot the Attachment: Email Attachment Prediction" (PDF):

"Everyone knows the missing attachment problem; a single missing attachment generates a wave of emails from all the recipients notifying the sender of the error. We present an attachment prediction system to aid email users in attachment management. We present a method by which an intelligent system can inform the user when an outgoing email is missing an attachment. Additionally, the system could activate an attachment recommendation system, whereby suggested attachments are offered once the system determines the user is likely to include an attachment. We present promising initial results and discuss implications of our work."