Earlier this year, we covered the launch of Xobni, an inbox add-on for Microsoft Outlook. This application is designed to tap into the hidden social network everyone uses: their inbox. More recently, another inbox addon called Xoopit came onto the scene. This one is for your Gmail inbox and provides a way to find files, photos, videos...and people, although that feature is not as obvious. Both of these applications are extending the possibilities of the inbox while turning them into hubs for for our real-life social connections.
Xobni, a company obviously catering to business users, have, as of today, launched a new version of their Outlook plugin. Needless to say, the Xobni team really knows their audience because this new version is offering built-in support for LinkedIn, the social network designed for business use.
With the new LinkedIn integration, Xobni now automatically shows a contact's current employer, job title, link to their LinkedIn profile, and contact photo in the app's sidebar. This is especially helpful for those who receive a lot of email from new contacts or have a hard time putting a face to name. Along with the LinkedIn support, Xobni still offers their core features - fast people and attachment search, threaded conversations, and automatic contact profiles.
Depending on how comfortable you are handling over your email login information, you may find Xoopit either a major security risk or one of the more useful web applications you've seen in a long time. Marshall has argued that Xoopit is proof that Gmail needs a better API, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and use Xoopit anyway because...well...finding attachments is hard.
The service, which came out of private beta just last week, offers a Gmail plugin that lets you search your inbox for photos, videos, and files - all of which are accessible with one click from the new toolbar added to the top of your Gmail inbox. You can also use the addon to find photos, videos, or files sent you by a specific person, and, as you type their name in the box provided, Xoopit helpfully auto-completes the entry.
On the Xoopit homepage, things get a little more interesting. Here, the latest items from your email display in a familiar lifestream-like view that practically has you looking for the "like" button. To the side of the screen, the people who send you the most items are listed and linked to - and those results may surprise you, bringing new insight into what's really going on in your inbox. (Forwarders of chain emails be warned - you've been identified!)
At the time of launch, the Xoopit addon, which is available as a Firefox plugin, did not support Firefox 3, but over the weekend, the Xoopit team added that support, which now makes it worth a download...at least for those who aren't too security conscious.
For a demo of Xoopit, you can check out this video:
Considering how much of our days, if not our lives, are spent dealing with the non-stop influx of email, it's nice to see some applications that are helping us make our inboxes more efficient while also mining them for important data. Microsoft Outlook, due to its nature of being desktop software, has always lent itself to the addition of plugins - even social ones like OutSync (facebook/Outlook sync) - but the idea of adding plugins to our web inboxes is still relatively new territory.
Because so many people use Gmail, we've seen the innovation begin there. First there was Gina Trapani's Better Gmail Firefox plugin, which arose from a collection of Greasemonkey scripts. Then even Google's Gmail team got in on the act earlier this month with their launch of Gmail Labs, the experimental features you can enable from your "Settings" page. Although some of those features are certainly less useful than others, the fact that Google is also hopping into the inbox addon game means there is definitely growing interest in this area (and say what you want - those "superstars" are really helpful).
Hopefully, the growth in this area will continue and we'll soon find that Google Labs, Xobni, and Xoopit were just the forerunners of the upgraded inbox trend.
Comments
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There is also Zenbe.com which is supposed to help out with different e-mail sites and clean em up a bit !!!
Posted by: Amit Elhanan | June 26, 2008 7:01 AM
I've been using Xobni for about 4 months now - and it's trully a masterpiece. I don't know what guys are using to search mail so fast.
However, I don't get the point of Xoopit. I will never give my email box credentials to any site. Furthermore, who send pics via email now anyways? :)
Posted by: Sasha Kovaliov
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June 26, 2008 7:01 AM
Completely agree. When I went to Xoopit's site, I was thinking, "err.. so you want me to send *all my gmail* to your server so you can extract attachments and present them back to me in a separate window? How about no?"
Posted by: J. Phil
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June 26, 2008 7:03 AM
Xoopit is pretty nice, but call me paranoid...I have a BIG problem handing over my login information.
Posted by: xxdesmus | June 26, 2008 7:16 AM
OK, Xoopit really looks cool. But it does not seem to work with the GMail for your Domains service at all. I cannot log in with my GoogleApps email. It keeps saying I don't have a Google Account, etc.
This is likely not a Xoopit problem. It's probably a limitation of Google. I also cannot use Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Reader or Google Bookmarks with the GFYD, I have to use my "old" GMail address as my "Google Account"
Bummer.
Posted by: Dave Lowe | June 26, 2008 7:21 AM
For small organizations and teams managing shared email accounts, such as info@example.com, Email Center Pro offers an easy solution. It's a SaaS built on Amazon Web Services, and free accounts are available. See emailcenterpro.com.
Posted by: Josh Cochrane | June 26, 2008 7:21 AM
Still waiting for GMail to be able to handle all the things these plugins and add-ons help out with. GMail is going to look and fuction entirely differently in a couple years, I believe.
Posted by: Todd Andrews | June 26, 2008 7:56 AM
The way I first heard about Xobni was through RWW. I downloaded it, liked it, and not a bunch of my coworkers have it. They like it too.
Posted by: Rob | June 26, 2008 9:10 AM
Test: Does leaving a comment on FF push the comment to RWW as well? UPDATE: Yes, comments are pushed to RWW. Amazing.
Posted by: Andrew Meyer
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June 26, 2008 9:33 AM
The best plugin for business users is ClearContext. It has a lot of features of both Xobni and Xoopit.
Posted by: Susan Hayward | June 26, 2008 10:27 AM
I tried out Xobni, but it really slowed Outlook down (and no one wants to make Outlook any slower ;) ).
After a few weeks trying out Xobni I got a new PC. I didn't install Xobni first, but I was forced to do it, in order to fix my mail-file.
After the installation it worked fine again and I could safely remove Xobni.
I'm not installing it again ;)
Posted by: Dennis Bjørn Petersen | June 26, 2008 11:53 AM
This is JK, one of the founders of Xoopit. Thanks for the insightful article Sarah! FYI, we are still in private beta. For your readers... direct link to signup: https://www.xoopit.com/signup?i=rww
@Dave Lowe we do support Google Apps. In fact we use that ourselves for our internal mail. You however need to signup for Xoopit after (or before) downloading the plugin. You can do so using invite code = "rww".
Posted by: Jonathan Katzman | June 26, 2008 11:54 AM
xoopit rocks my world!
Posted by: sean808080
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June 26, 2008 12:42 PM
I used GTD In Box, and then added Xoopit. Both are are useful but I think the conflict with each other.
Posted by: Russellreno
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June 26, 2008 12:44 PM
Xoopit is amazing. It found photos and files I did not realize were in my Gmail.
Posted by: Russellreno
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June 26, 2008 12:48 PM
Been using Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards) with Outlook and like it.
Posted by: Victor Ryden
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June 26, 2008 1:01 PM
I use Xoopit. well, I don't really.
Posted by: rambn
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June 26, 2008 5:19 PM
I used Xoopit for about 1 week and "dropped it like it's hot." Spamminess didn't outweigh utility.
Posted by: Mark Forman
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June 26, 2008 5:25 PM
Hi, this is Bijan, one of Xoopit's founders. We've seen the comments regarding email passwords and privacy issues. You can think of Xoopit as a mail client, which makes it possible for you to access your mail data. We use industry best practices to secure our service and encrypt your password and have rigorous internal policies on the same.
You can learn more about how we manage your data on our blog: http://blog.xoopit.com
We are working with webmail providers so that we can reduce amount of data we collect and store: e.g. OAuth for credentials, not having to store attachments ourselves and more. We're big believers in email as a platform. This is just the first step...
Posted by: bijan marashi | June 26, 2008 5:57 PM
Xoopit doesn't just store your email credentials, they download all your email to their servers.
From their site:
Question #3: Do you store a copy of my email?
We currently index and store a copy of your email on our servers so that we can help you discover new things lost in your inbox as we add new indexing features, like support for Facebook messages.
Posted by: ae | June 27, 2008 6:23 AM
@ae
That is precisely my problem with Xoopit. I like the service, but I will not hand over my login info and copies of ALL my email. No chance in hell.
Posted by: xxdesmus | June 27, 2008 10:53 AM
For implementing GTD you might try out this web-based application:
http://www.gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version is available too.
As with the last update, now you can add or invite Contacts, and share your Projects and Contexts with them.
Hope you like it.
Posted by: Dan | June 30, 2008 12:53 PM
Also VERY fast Outlook search (and it doesnt slow down OL):
http://www.lookeen.com
It rocks!
Posted by: J. Daener | July 2, 2008 7:29 AM
I've been using Xobni lately. very nice tool - nice concept and the search results are much faster than Outlook.
However, Xobni doesnt change the way we work; it conserves the limitations of working with emails.
Have a look at ActionBase. It offers an enterprise solution and changes the basic concpet of working together - Instead of corresponding and sending messages - it simply allows working on the same email - so everyone is up to date and there aren't douzens of correspondences about the same mail.
Sure worths a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkK2zkqac5M
Posted by: Eyal Sherman | July 6, 2008 4:36 AM