WebWriting.com

I caught a glimpse of McCain speaking live from LA today and when I woke up he was still talking.

I’ve been playing with Xobni off and on for a number of weeks (at one point it stopped loading and it was a few days before I had time to re-install, we also had some exchange server issues and I had to stop using Xobni for a while to diagnose). That being said, as beta software goes it’s very stable. Rare symptoms are CPU spiking and when it once failed to load and turned itself off. Given the quality of the product and polish I fully expect that by the time they go public beta it will be very solid. With that note…on to the review.

If you haven’t checkout the website, Xobni is an e-mail add-on for searching and managing e-mail and relationships. The primary interface is an outlook sidebar that, when minimized shows you your next meeting and some information related to the person who sent you the currently selected e-mail. When open, Xobni contains a myriad of contextual information and links.

There is a search box and two top level panels in the Xobni side bar: E-mail, which shows you information related to the currently selected e-mail and Organize, which displays upcoming appointments, to-do items (including flagged e-mails) and a stay in touch panel listing contacts with whom you have not communicated in a while.

E-mail

I used to have to pause my current “e-mail train of thought” and search for e-mails from someone. Xobni gives me another view, but that’s just the first step. In addition to finding a person and e-mail from the, Xobni shows related people, conversations with threaded e-mail chain, attachments and quick links to schedule a meeting, send an e-mail or skype. It’s extremely useful for drill-down searching. I can click on a conversation, show various levels of detail, identify an e-mail, click on another recipient and repeat. Xobni stacks the context in small bars at the top of the screen so I can quickly jump back to any point in my search.

E-mail analytics is interesting but not immediately useful as a productivity booster. I can see how much I have communicated with someone and sent vs. received quantity. Xobni also shows me when an individual tends to send me e-mail in a nice histogram.

Organize

The organized bar shows upcoming appointments (but not the current one – minor inconvenience) to do list items (including flagged e-mails, which is great) and a “Stay in touch list” of people Xobni says you haven’t communicated with in a while. For those of us who are e-mail whores, this is a great tool. If you hate talking to people this is either a gentle reminder that you should keep in touch or an annoying list of names that you don’t care about.

Props to Xobni for minimal usage of space. These are lists where I want to see as much as possible and scan with my eyes, not with my mouse.

I’ve found that when I need to get in touch with someone who sent me an e-mail a while back, Xobni is a top notch replacement for the “sort by sender, scroll till you find the last e-mail” approach. With Xobni I type in a name and I instantly get links to call (via skype), e-mail, schedule time, list of related contacts, last conversations (no matter how old) and files exchanged (both sent and received).

Conclusions

Xobni is a very nice addition to Outlook. It gives you an orthogonal view both for your current context and more interestingly to pursue a tangential train of thought. If you’d like an invite, I’ve got four left (as of 3-21-2008) so drop me a line.

Q: What do you do with leftover Chinese food takeout rice (or any leftover plain rice for that matter)?

A: Fry it!

Oil or butter

1 Cup of leftover rice (approx ½ a Chinese takeout box)

¼ cup frozen peas

2 tbps soy sauce + flavoring

1 egg, beaten

Saute the rice and peas in oil or butter. Don’t worry if the rice has gone stale, it will rehydrate. Add the soy sauce plus flavoring (Chinese fish sauce or salt or turmeric) to taste. Fry up the egg and mix it in. Serve hot!

Better yet – have leftover leftovers the next day!

In celebration of having only 380 days of bush left to go, a few links:

25 George W. Bush Facts

The Bush Countdown Blog

Six hospital staff including nurses, doctors and administrators on a smoking break outside the Nessel Cancer Services building.

Almost ended up taking the train to Salem this morning. That would have been interesting. Clearly something wrong with my coffee…