Could someone please invent an email viewer akin to TweetDeck? This way you could have vertical columns of emails from different groupings that you establish, allowing you to pre-filter what you are seeing and have whole verticals that are “read right now” and others that can wait? Colors, filtering into folders, etc….they’re all not addressing the basic problem which is to pre-apply some sort of classification to emails as they come in, rather than leaving that up to you.
If you think about it, given how much we all rely on email, our interface has barely changed in the last decade. Is there some great innovation out there that I missed?

If you’re looking for pre-classification of your email, that’s possible using rules in Gmail.
It doesn’t have the visual pop of columns like tweetdeck does, though.
if you consider switching to using gmail / google apps for your email.. they have a “multiple inbox” feature that might fit the bill.. the inboxes can be based on search filters, etc.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-multiple-inboxes.html
What about OutlookDeck? http://is.gd/pmh6
I haven’t tried it – I just saw it mentioned in a Lifehacker article…
Pär, thank you! This is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. I’m going to check it out.