I travelled to Botswana this week for work and all through the last couple of weeks in the run up to the trip, I received tons of emails and documents relating to the trip, which I filed away but was too busy to read. None of it needed immediate attention but I knew I had to read it all at some point before the trip.  I figured that in the worst case scenario I would just have to print it all off and read it during the flight to Botswana.

The day of my trip came and of course there I was rushing to do what seemed like a million and one things all at once. Now my life is not usually this chaotic but this was an especially ill-timed trip. My last minute print-all approach suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. I did manage to print off the most important messages and documents but I would have given anything for a tool that:

• Enabled me to search for everything related to my trip
• Automatically compiled a dossier from such content, eliminating any duplicates, for example by detecting a single, whole email conversation and discarding the separate, individual emails that made up the conversation.
• Allowed me to add and remove items from the auto-generated dossier
• Enabled me to print off my finished dossier in a nice format

Now the first of the features above is already provided by Google’s and Microsoft’s Desktop Search tools. If someone were to create a plug-in for one or both of these tools that would execute the rest of the above, I reckon that they would soon get acquired by one of these giant companies, looking to beat the other to the punch.

By the way, if you think the idea of an auto-generated dossier such as this is far-fetched, check out what TripIt is doing. You basically send them your travel-purchase email – you know, the ones that the travel companies send you to confirm your booking etc. TripIt then sends you a detailed, auto-generated travel plan that includes your itinerary, weather and destination information, maps etc. It is a little different to what I am talking about but it shows the power of software.