Here's another interesting Outlook tool created by the research team at Microsoft. It's called the "Social Network and Relationship Finder" but it goes by the name SNARF. It is free to download. SNARF is designed to provide a quick overview of unread mail, organized by its importance. The UI shows a series of different panes with unread mail in them; each pane shows a list of authors of messages. The importance of the unread email is determined by who sent it.
Look at the Outlook Mobile Manager post for another Microsoft Research project for managing email.
Thanks to Mike Swanson for pointing this out. Some of you may also remember Mike has a very cool (and very popular) Macro Wallpaper Collection.