So I use Mycrocosm to graph the number of unread emails in my inbox each morning, because I think it's funny/tragic. But I got tired of doing it myself, so I wrote a script to do it for me.

I call it mycromail, and you can find it here: http://tim-smith.us/projects/mycromail/mycromail.zip

If you call it from cron every morning, its output will look like this: http://mycro.media.mit.edu/dataset/show/2675

It logs in to your IMAP mailboxes, grabs the total number of unread emails in a list of folders that you specify, and then uses your Twitter account to send (a) direct message update(s) to Mycrocosm. This requires that Mycrocosm knows your Twitter username (on your "My Profile" page).

The Mycrocosm dataset you point it at must already exist. I recommend a line graph grouped by date.

You could make this into a web service and make millions have no users and -- bonus! -- have creepy access to your friends' email, but I've spent enough time on this.

Let me know what you think!