I tear my hair out looking for attachments in my email inboxes. Sometimes I can find the attachment I am looking for when the sender has put a useful, descriptive label in the “re:” line. But, when the sender merely labels the email “Hi” and attaches the key piece of information in a separate document, I might as well just throw that attachment into the circular file.

Admit it – you have searched fruitlessly for attachments too. If you want to cut that process off at the knees, check out the very cool service Attachments.me.  The application “reads” your emails, indexes your attachments and displays them in a visual grid for easy searching and scanning.  The tech behind the scenes figures out the file type (music, image, docs, etc.) and filters them accordingly, and can organize attachments by date. Dig deeper with search, which works by file type, email address, or tag. The application can also search the content of PDFs and text documents, as well as go outside to pull information from certain sites like Flickr and YouTube, relative to the attachments. Essentially, Attachments.me is attempting to structure the data applicable to attachments within the attachments themselves and across the Web!

Or course, there is the social. You can share your old attachments with friends. More social features are on the way.

I love the idea of this service! Not just because I am a very visual person and can scan images much faster than text, but even moreso because applications like Attachments.me hold the promise of broken barriers between websites and the data held within those sites. Useful and high tech – a winning combination.

The service is beta, by invite only at this point. I can’t wait for my invite to arrive!