Cc:Betty takes control of messy email conversations

Managing an email thread with dozens of participants, hundreds of documents, and thousands of opinions is no one's idea of a good time. But what can you do? Most of the time there's really no other option than spamming everyone, over and over again, and hoping you keep track of it all.

Enter Cc:Betty. The curiously-named company, which just launched its beta at this week's DEMO show, offers one solution. All you have to do is cc "Betty" in the email thread (she's at betty@ccbetty.com) and she'll take all the messages, links, documents, images, videos, and anything else she finds in your digital missives and put them into a single, easy-to-navigate "mailspace" dedicated solely to that conversation. And every time someone replies, their responses and attachments are added to the mailspace too.

I've been using Cc:Betty for a week and can attest to its simplicity and utility. Once your account is set up (you simply click an activation link the first time you're included on a thread along with Cc:Betty), you're ready to go. Cc:Betty responds to emails from your conversation group with a link to the mailspace, where you can go and browse through the entire history of messages and replies, plus check out an archive of all the attachments associated with the thread. Cc:Betty even includes links to maps for any address that's included in the email thread.

And that's really it. You can reply to messages within the Cc:Betty interface or your own mail client, the outcome is the same. When there's a new topic to discuss, just start a new thread (with a new subject line) and Cc:Betty creates a new mailspace separate from the others.

My only problem with Cc:Betty is that she's about as slow as you'd expect her to be (at least from her picture). It takes about five minutes for a message to be processed into the mailspace, and that can be a lifetime when a discussion's going fast. Cc:Betty ends up being better as a reference repository than a primary place to collaborate... but hey, it's free, so give it a whirl!