On the new Xobni release – 1.6.3
I’ve just installed the new version of Xobni – 1.6.3 – for Outlook. Xobni sits inside Outlook and acts as a helper, reading emails, indexing the content for searches and putting info about your contacts into a sidebar. I’ve used it quite a bit, although I have to say it puts a load on the system at Outlook startup time. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the new release:
- The download required me to uninstall the old version before I could install the new one. Not the best of approaches, but I did that. Then it re-indexed my email – again, not the most convenient approach.
- The new version links into Facebook to get certain pieces of information. I like the feature up to a point – problem is, a lot of my contacts have fairly common names, so I have to select the person I’m connecting to from a list – and there’s very little info about them, so often it’s just not possible to determine who this is. Not everyone on Facebook has a photo. When I do get a positive hit, though, it’s a winner.
- The LinkedIn connection from the previous incarnation is still there, and that’s a winner too. This time they’ve added Hoovers, which will go over ‘big’ with business-oriented users, and Skype contact support, which will go over big with a mostly different audience.
- There are some nice feature tweaks from the old version that I appreciate – the drop-down menu approach to the LinkedIn, Facebook & Hoover buttons; the new ‘Start over’ button (needed that!). I also like the more detailed aproach to the profile editing. The ability to pull info into the profile from verious sources available – photo from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook or Xobni; position & company info from Outlook, LinkedIn or Xobni – these are good additions. Behind the scenes there seem to have been a few adjustments – a little faster, I think, and the logic is definitely improved – it no longer confuses me with another Steve when it begins to build the indexes (it used to take about 30 minutes to figure out my correct name).
- Ranking still seems to be wrong based on the numbers – someone with 365 emails total is being ranked higher than someone with 366, and one friend with 3 total is ranked at 10, while another with 110 is ranked at 12! I don’t get that, but it’s not keeping me up at night.
At this point, the only confusion I have is – how do I merge profiles? It used to be that by giving 2 email addresses the same name, the profiles were merged. Now this doesn’t seem to happen. I liked the old approach, because it meant that I had all their current (and past) emails in one place (and it also merged their ranks); now if I click on someone I may not get the email I want.
My wishlist – include Twitter addresses, and allow me to send/receive my Twitters through the Xobni addon. I’m already using OutTwit for this – it has a few flaws, but combining products would be sweet. You could write the Twitter in the area currently used as the drop-down menu (hint, hint).
Mike
Dave Travis
Rose
Thanks for this great synopsis. (BTW, “No Name” near bottom of your list was Mel Lawrenz, Elmbrook...
November 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
1) Merge two contacts is easy. Edit their profile. Add the second email for the person. Viola, they are magically merged. Same thing to Un-Merge. You just delete the email address that is the offending address, and Xobni will magically break out that person to a separate record…conversations and attachments included.
2) Ranking is built on more than just pure quantity of email. It relates to the balance of sent and received. It looks at speed to respond. It looks at currency of responses (if you haven’t corresponded with someone for a few years, are they really your #1 rank? Etc. There is magic in there. And, if we are still indexing your inbox, things will change.
Jeff Bonfortes last blog post..Xobni brings the internet into Outlook… 4 ways your Outlook will never be the same
November 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Jeff – well, I did as you said and it sort of worked and sort of didn’t. First, it’s the reverse of the way it used to be – before, you edited the profile you wanted to drop, changed the name, and all the data was merged into the profile that had the new name. What you’re saying on the new version is to go to the profile you want to keep, add the email from the other profile, and the old one goes away. So I tried it on one of my contacts – he had 2 personal emails and his home number on one profile, 2 work emails and his work number on another. (There was also a bunch of other info on each.)
So I went to his personal profile (which I want to keep), and added one of his work emails. I figured you’d find that work profile and merge it in, per your comment above. What happened was it added the new email to the personal profile, removed it from the work profile, and left the rest of the info in the work profile. OK, that made some sense.
Then I reasoned that, because there were 2 emails, the other email had to be moved before the merge could take place. So I put the other work email into the home profile. The work profile went away. Unfortunately, so did the rest of the info on the work profile, work number and all!
So I don’t think you can truly call it a ‘merge’ anymore – it’s become a manual copy.
(BTW, small point: it would be nice if I could copy/paste the email from the work profile to the home profile, but I couldn’t – I had to type them in.)
Re your second point, I’ll buy it – like I said, it wasn’t a bovver.