Xobni

Xobni - that’s Inbox backwards – is an Outlook plugin designed to turn your email into a social atmosphere.

Likes: This could be an interesting tool on my personal email. If they open this client to other providers like gmail, I might be willing to give it a second chance. I don’t see how it would improve my workflow as an outlook product. It did improve my search time, but not by much. I love the concept – understanding and correlating the relationships between contacts and turning email into a social environment – an outstanding philosophy which I hope is built upon and developed, but Xobni is not quite there.  Fix the flaws, add more service integration and usability features (upload pictures to contact cards, mashup with an IM service perhaps), open it to other email clients, and then we’ll talk.

Flaws: It was not possible to have more than one email account open inside Outlook with Xobni installed. Not only crashed my email account, but also others connected on the same server. Often saved wrong contact information - for example if multiple phone numbers in an email it would pull only one.  Could not add/change tasks from within the interface side pane. Load time awful. Color scheme not pretty.

Links: Xobni   TechCrunchBumped

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