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Everybody is getting in the game. Google just announced Buzz, its social feed add-on to Gmail, last week and today Microsoft is bringing the feed to Outlook. Microsoft first announced its social media add-on, the Outlook Social Connector, last November but today begins the public beta period for LinkedIn for Outlook. The company has also announced partnerships with Facebook and Myspace.

Outlook users can now use email plug-in Liaise to automatically extract action items, delegation and priority levels from the free text of email conversations. This is software that's so cool it makes me jealous of Windows users.

Liaise launched in September and won the Peoples' Choice Award for Enterprise Products at DEMO but is available to the public at large for the first time today.

Xobni, the Outlook plugin that reveals the hidden social network in your inbox, has today launched a business service called Xobni Enterprise. With this, I.T. administrators are being given new tools to deploy and manage the plugin across corporate desktops. In addition, the company is offering customizable extensions for popular enterprise systems including Salesforce CRM, SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, and others. It can even tap into a company's own information store saved in an LDAP database like Microsoft's Active Directory or it can pull from other internal websites.

The French Government's public finance department will switch 130,000 desktop PC's to Mozilla's email and calendar applications. Mozilla's Thunderbird email service, Lightning Calendar and an open-source groupware will replace IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office.

The move signals how more government agencies from around the world are dropping enterprise accounts with major vendors to cut down on costs and get better license agreements.They are turning to open-source providers and companies like Google that can offer email and services such as Google Docs.

The problem with most contact management tools is that only a portion of your acquaintances are considered useful. Meanwhile, unconventional contacts like PTA parents, yoga partners and softball teammates remain invisible. Social graphing software PeopleMaps aims to change that. Similar to LinkedIn, the tool allows users to leverage their networks to gain access to new leads. In addition to importing professional connections from LinkedIn, PeopleMaps also provides a visual map of connections imported from Facebook, Gmail and Outlook.

Ever wish you had the ear of the employees who work on Microsoft Office? For all those whose work lives and breathes Office, here's your chance to make yourself heard. Two enterprising Microsoft employees have created MakeOfficeBetter.com, an unofficial outlet for ideas that will improve the world's most popular office suite.

Like the White House project that started up in March, the site is basically a clone of Digg's functionality, even if it isn't using that exact software. By logging in with your OpenID or signing up, you can submit new ideas and vote up favorites.

Google just launched "Going Google" - a marketing campaign similar to the Spread Firefox to encourage companies to switch to Google Apps in the workplace. While millions already use Gmail, the campaign is aimed at luring business and enterprise users away from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Google already claims to serve more than 1.75 million companies and judging by the flashy campaign, it hopes to increase that number in the near future.

Xobni, the makers of an Outlook add-in for a "smarter inbox," have just released a slew of new premium features in a package called "Xobni Plus." For the most part, these new features aim to bring more advanced search tools to your inbox, including the ability to build advanced queries, search within conversations and networks, and create Boolean searches. Also new are auto-suggest and filtering features. The question now is will users pay $29.95 for the upgrade?

Earlier this month, Google attempted to make a shot across Microsoft's bow with an Apps Sync for Outlook. Unfortunately for them, it completely fizzled when Microsoft made clear that the plugin disabled key Outlook functionality.

Google admitted as much at the time. But today, they've announced that the issues have been fixed. Windows Desktop Search now works, and users can control how the archiving operates. For those who continued to use the completely dysfunctional version, Google will save you from yourself by automatically updating to the current release.

"I think of this as a love story," began Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager at Google, as he announced Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a plug-in that syncs Outlook with Apps, much like Outlook syncs with Exchange.

But love? Not so much. Google, intent on building its enterprise channel, has recognized that many Outlook users - particularly enterprise users - aren't ready to make the leap to the cloud and to Google Apps. But maybe, just maybe, Google Apps Sync is what it will take to woo them.

Xobni, the Outlook email plugin that makes your inbox a more social experience, is finally leaving their beta phase after 10 months of testing. The company is also announcing they've taken in an additional investment of $3.2 million to bring their series B round to over $10 million.

About 6 months ago, I switched from Outlook to Gmail and wrote about the experience. It was a move I haven't regretted, and I've never been tempted to return to Outlook. Despite a few glitches in the matrix that occur when Gmail goes down, the service is as close to "free, perfect, and now" as it gets. So, why am I spending time switching to an email service by an unknown start-up called Relenta?

Revenue growth is priority #1 for most businesses today. So, good salespeople are in demand, and management wants to give them the best possible tools to make them productive. Selling is a numbers game. As long as you do reasonably sensible things, the time invested tends to corelate to revenue earned. Therefore, productivity really does matter. This is not an area to skimp on. If you can make somebody who brings in $1 million in revenue 10% more productive, that would mean an additional $100,000. So, what is happening in the market with tools for those who hustle on the front lines of business, the people who sell the products and services, who get capital for your business and sell it when the time comes, who hire the people who can grow your business? What will they be using in future?

I recently moved to a new office and found that I couldn't send mail via Microsoft Outlook. I've had this same problem in different locations. I've been told that it depends on the ISP settings and it is easy to fix by contacting the ISP. That seemed like a pain, so this week I just started using Gmail as my default. I've not looked back. This is anecdotal and maybe I am a market of one, but it is a big deal for me. I have “lived in Outlook” for years. It was the one part of Office that I thought I would never replace. I suspect I am not alone.

The calendar syncing and sharing company Calgoo has decided to release all its products for free. Until today, Calgoo made a free version of its software available and charged $30 a year for its more fully featured pro 'Connect' accounts. User who bought a license for the pro account before today will continue to receive free email support for the duration of their licence.

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.

I have been a total skeptic on proprietary messaging within social networks. After all, who on earth would want a proprietary tool when e-mail reaches everybody? I love it, though, when circumstances change a deeply ingrained opinion. The technology business has a way of doing that. You've likely heard the expression, "I live in Outlook." Well I used to. Now I hop rather awkwardly between Outlook and Gmail. Could I soon live in LinkedIn? Could you?

Xobni, the startup that brings the social network to your inbox, has just announced the launch of their public beta, which begins today. We covered Xobni back in January, calling the software "ingenious" because of its ability to tap into the biggest, yet often hidden, social network that everyone utilizes - email.

NewsGator is a company that develops RSS aggregators for individuals and businesses. It is the maker of the popular FeedDemon RSS Reader for Windows and NetNewsWire for Mac. Today, NewsGator has announced a new version of their RSS Reader, designed specifically for users of Microsoft Outlook.

The new program, Inbox 3.0, offers several new features including enhanced relevancy, attention reporting, easy subscription adding, flag synchronization and a redesigned UI.