May 9th, 2008Today I installed Xobni, an add-on for Outlook that helps you manage your email. (Xobni backwards is “inbox”.) Xobni has been talked up quite a bit, and I was curious to see if the reality matched the hype. I’m still too new to it to say whether it’s everything it’s cracked up to be, but after my first day, here’s my reaction.
It’s cool to see who ranks as your top email contacts. Everyone in your inbox is automatically ranked based on how many emails sent and received from that person. Linda was #6. Marco was #10. Stacy, my boss, was #4. Strangely, it ranked me as #1 - I don’t send myself emails very often from other email accounts, so that was odd. I still haven’t figured out who ranks as #2 and #3.
Each time you click on an email in your inbox, you get instant access to any files that were sent or received from that person via email. That’s great for me, since sometimes I lose file attachments.
You also see email stats about your contacts, like how many emails sent to/received from that person, what time of day you most often get email from them, and it even tries to assemble contact info (address, phone) for people based on data contained in their emails. (It wasn’t so successful with that - it assigned Linda a cell phone number for a contractor who’s phone number she was emailing me.) Possibly the best thing about Xobni is its interface, which is contained a vertical pane added to the right side of Outlook’s interface. It’s attractive and functional.
Good stuff overall, though. Check it out if you use Outlook.
