ReadWriteWeb

In the mobile application development space, there are a lot of companies that are shooting at the same target - to create actionable data that developers can use to inform their design and marketing decisions. There are a variety of ways to do this, from creating "predictive" analytics, adding a social layer to cross-platform apps or more traditional tracking and reporting. A new Italian startup called BeInToo thinks it can do better by adding gamefication.

BeInToo is more than just adding a SDK to an existing set of apps that adds game mechanics. It also helps developers act on the actionable data that BeInToo collects on its users. It helps developers track the reputation of their users, offer them rewards and market apps across platforms.

Xobni is launching a gadget platform and app store that allows you to run third-party apps in Outlook.

It is fairly robust. Xobni is launching with a number of services. Application partners include Dropbox, Yammer, Atlassian, Salesforce.com and a host of others.

Once you've added x-ray vision to your email inbox, you'll never go back to life without it. The latest service to offer just that is Xobni, a high-profile startup that brought its Outlook plug-in out of Beta status a year ago next week. Today Xobni comes to Gmail and it looks really nice. The first 100 ReadWriteWeb readers who visit this link and enter the code XOBNI-RWW will be provided access to it. The company says iPhone and Android versions will open for testing within 90 days.

Xobni competes with Rapportive (my favorite to date) and Gist, which was recently acquired by Blackberry company RIM. Another service called eTacts (site now down) was recently acquired by Salesforce. Xobni was funded by Blackberry Partners a year ago, but remains independent. Check out the screenshot below to get a feel for how it looks, what it offers and how it's different.

This year enterprise 2.0 went from being a fringe idea to being mainstream as CIOs started asking "how?" instead of "why?" Big name vendors entered the marketplace with new products and existing vendors released new versions with innovative new features.

We chose to break up the enterprise products of the year up into categories: new product, e-mail, mobile, development tool, database, social software suite, social CRM, microblogging, conferencing and CMS. Products were evaluated based on market performance, innovation, utility, impact on the space as a whole and improvement over last year. Each of these products either changed the game, or won it.

Enterprise collaboration SaaS Huddle and Outlook plugin vendor Xobni announced this morning a partnership to bring Huddle into users inboxes via Xobni. Huddle's Xobni gadget will display a user's Huddle activity stream, shared workspaces and latest files. Xobni already pulls profile information from sources such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Salesforce.com, but Huddle integration bring a new dimension to the plugin as an professional collaboration tool.

Today, the company is announcing that the first Outlook gadgets have now gone live.

The announcement of Google's Gmail Priority Inbox likely made more than a few enterprise knowledge workers stuck with Microsoft Outlook and drowning in e-mail quite envious of Gmail. That is, if they weren't envious already. Marshall also took a look at a few plugins and services that are turning e-mail into a platform, including the incredible Rapportive.

Lucky for Outlook users, there are actually several plugins to extend Outlook's functionality and ease that Gmail envy. E-mail addons have been heating up for a while now. Here are five plugins you should check out, whether you have Gmail envy or not.

The effort to bring Facebook into the enterprise continues with more services using Outlook as a gateway to extend a contact network and use as a foundations for a CRM environment.

SenderOK is one of the latest effiorts to give more context to email by showing a picture of the sender in an email message. Too bad it only works on Windows XP or Vista. Ugh.

Microsoft Outlook has historically been at the heart of document-based environments that for many years have ruled the enterprise.

But the walls that have guarded this document-based world are crumbling fast. Outlook is now more than a message center. It is becoming a collaborative space where the lines between Google Docs and other social applications start to blur.

The best way to reduce bounce rates and design a path of least resistance for members and customers is to offer something they want. While others prioritize member acquisition in order to build an early product test case, Sean Ellis has a slightly different philosophy. Ellis has worked with companies like LogMeIn and Xobni to produce scalable marketing programs. Before tweaking design and funnel optimization, Ellis takes pride in the fact that his successes have been built on establishing a core value to users.