A while back I wrote about how much I liked the Xobni email add on for Outlook. A short time later I heard rumors that Microsoft was buying them, but that appears not to be true at this point, though I still think it makes a lot of sense.  In the meantime, I have continued to use and be impressed with Xobni.  I have come to rely on its ultra fast search and the way it organizes threads of conversations and groups of people, as well as attached files.

An interesting thing though about Xobni. As I was given invitations, I would send them out to people I know.  Though many of them liked the functionality of the product, they said that it slowed their Outlook to a crawl and just did not think the performance hit was worth it.  Maybe I got used to the slowness or I am just not seeing it, but I did not see what they saw. In any event, many people were not using the product.

Well the Xobni folks just released a new version of the product that promises improved performance. I hope that helps those people who were complaining about this. It also offers several other new features, the biggest being LinkedIn integration.  I really like this LinkedIn integration as it gives you yet another layer of information on the people writing to you. All in all, I think this just makes the product more indispensable than it is already.  It is now available to the public, so I would encourage you to check it out for yourself!

A while back I wrote about how much I liked the Xobni email add on for Outlook. A short time later I heard rumors that Microsoft was buying them, but that appears not to be true at this point, though I still think it makes a lot of sense.  In the meantime, I have continued to use and be impressed with Xobni.  I have come to rely on its ultra fast search and the way it organizes threads of conversations and groups of people, as well as attached files.

An interesting thing though about Xobni. As I was given invitations, I would send them out to people I know.  Though many of them liked the functionality of the product, they said that it slowed their Outlook to a crawl and just did not think the performance hit was worth it.  Maybe I got used to the slowness or I am just not seeing it, but I did not see what they saw. In any event, many people were not using the product.

Well the Xobni folks just released a new version of the product that promises improved performance. I hope that helps those people who were complaining about this. It also offers several other new features, the biggest being LinkedIn integration.  I really like this LinkedIn integration as it gives you yet another layer of information on the people writing to you. All in all, I think this just makes the product more indispensable than it is already.  It is now available to the public, so I would encourage you to check it out for yourself!

No this is not about whether Xobni (inbox spelled backwards) works on Macs.  It is a response to Mitchell's positively gushing review of this cool Outlook plug in on his blog today. The line actually comes from an old Honeymooners episode where Ralph is the 'chef of the future" and Norton asks "Tell me O chef of the future, can it core an apple".  Well, anyway Xobni will not core an apple, it does not even work on Macs, unless you are running Windows/Outlook in Parallels. But it does kick your Outlook experience up not one, but two and even three notches!

As Mitchell says it allows for organizing your data in Outlook in ways that put much more information at your fingertips quickly.  The search feature is miles ahead of Outlooks search capability.  Just today I need a file that was sent to me by another person.  When I brought up that person in Xobni all of the files every attached by him were at my fingertips.  That alone saved me minutes in searching.  I love all the metrics it gives you as well.  All in all I think Xobni is a really cool tool that if you are an Outlook user, you will find a ton of value in. Here is an   It is free, so go request a download!

Two things I would note is that first if you use multiple computers this will cause Xobni to report false metrics. Maybe if there was an server side plug in that could be overcome.  The other thing is I would like to see Xobni really tackle social networking connections.  Besides the data it pulls from Outlook, lets see it hook into Twitter, Facebook, MySpace type of networks and correlate data from my in box with that as well. 

But even those small things aside, if you use Outlook for mail, I would rush over and give Xobni a whirl!

No this is not about whether Xobni (inbox spelled backwards) works on Macs.  It is a response to Mitchell's positively gushing review of this cool Outlook plug in on his blog today. The line actually comes from an old Honeymooners episode where Ralph is the 'chef of the future" and Norton asks "Tell me O chef of the future, can it core an apple".  Well, anyway Xobni will not core an apple, it does not even work on Macs, unless you are running Windows/Outlook in Parallels. But it does kick your Outlook experience up not one, but two and even three notches!

As Mitchell says it allows for organizing your data in Outlook in ways that put much more information at your fingertips quickly.  The search feature is miles ahead of Outlooks search capability.  Just today I need a file that was sent to me by another person.  When I brought up that person in Xobni all of the files every attached by him were at my fingertips.  That alone saved me minutes in searching.  I love all the metrics it gives you as well.  All in all I think Xobni is a really cool tool that if you are an Outlook user, you will find a ton of value in. Here is an   It is free, so go request a download!

Two things I would note is that first if you use multiple computers this will cause Xobni to report false metrics. Maybe if there was an server side plug in that could be overcome.  The other thing is I would like to see Xobni really tackle social networking connections.  Besides the data it pulls from Outlook, lets see it hook into Twitter, Facebook, MySpace type of networks and correlate data from my in box with that as well. 

But even those small things aside, if you use Outlook for mail, I would rush over and give Xobni a whirl!