Posts with tag "Xobni"

Email, or how the old dog needs new tricks

email_fright Electronic mail, commonly referred to as e-mail, is probably one of the oldest consumer computer protocols and user clients. In the years that it has been in use it has changed very little. Sure there has been attempts as with IncrediMail and other similar email clients to spiffy it up and make it more attractive to users of all ages.

As a communication method within the corporate environment it is unequalled in use. In the current world of Web 2.0 and social media services it is a growing staple of letting you know who is following you and as a way to confirm who you are to these services.

The problem is that in all these years and the different uses nothing about email has changed. It is still constantly flooded by scammers and other such unwanted mail. I was reminded of this once again after reading John Furrier’s post at SiliconAngle where he laments the current status of email and it’s various clients.

Whether it is web-based or desktop client based email the technology behind this transporting of our communications is stagnant. Sure we try to improve it with plug-ins like Xobni or Gist but all they do is add further complexity on top of an already bloated form of communication.

As much as the social media gurus love to pontificate about how email is dying and being replaced by things like Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook the fact is that email will be around a lot longer than they will be. That doesn’t mean that it is a perfect communication tool by any stretch of the imagination.

What it does need though is a bottom up re-evaluation and a better way of dealing with the constant flow of email we get each day. It doesn’t need to go away, because it won’t, but it does need a radically re-design and rethinking of how it works,

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From the Pipeline – 4.30.08

  • Category: Odds & Ends
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  • Posted 1849 days ago

And so we make it through another Hump Day and head into the weekend stretch. Hopefully up here in the Great White North we’ll start seeing the return of decent weather as well. These 40F days are getting old really quick. In the meantime here’s some things that caught my eye in today’s FriendFeed pipeline.

Psystar Open Computer unboxing and hands-on :: Engadget – more details on the off again on again supplier of PC computers running OS X. As boring as the post might be the real fun is in the comments. Man talk about a bunch of folks getting their knickers in a knot.

Social Media Has Not Reached Mainstream :: SheGeeks – Corvida spent the day in a self imposed Twitter exile but did get this very good post out during the peaks and valleys of the Twitter shakes.

I’ve redesigned :: Scobleizer – the world must becoming to an end. Robert has had his long standing blog redesigned and gawd forbid he has ads on it. Will wonders never cease.

Xobni Walks Away From A Microsoft Deal :: TechCrunch – apparently Xobni – a plugin for MS Outlook to socialize your email – decided that it didn’t want to be served up on a plate to Ballmer and walked away from a supposed done deal.

Twitter and more disconnection :: Jeff’s Junk – an interesting post on Twitter and Jeff’s take on the noise surrounding it.

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From the Pipeline – 4.20.08

  • Category: Odds & Ends
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  • Posted 1859 days ago

Well it looks like we got our bitchmeme this weekend after all courtesy of a post on TechCrunch that took a look at the data behind the Leaderboard 100; which for those that care WinExtra placed somewhere in the 70′s. In the meantime here’s some things that caught my eye on my FriendFeed pipeline.

Signal vs Noise :: SocialTech – Josie has some interesting thoughts on how some days that the signal to noise ratio might actually be the thing you need.

Sources: Microsoft Signs Letter Of Intent To Acquire Xobni :: TechCrunch – Michael lets us all know the news about Microsoft buying up Xobni – which is a plugin for Outlook to enhance its social media / networking abilities.

Twitter: Talk to us when things go bad :: The Last Podcast – Frederic has some advice for Twitter during its times of trouble – talk to us.

What does an algorithm think? :: Scripting News – Dave has another go at the supposed ties between Gabe Rivera and Michael Arrington (even though he won’t name the actual names) that enables TechCrunch to always be at the top of Techmeme.

Man builds rad trimaran sailboat in yard, now it’s stuck there :: CrunchGear – all I can say on this is – oopps

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There’s nothing wrong with rankings – it’s natural

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 2067 days ago

Live and die by the top whatever Top 10, Top 100 etc etc etc … it doesn’t where you look in our society whether it be online or off – rankings of one sort or another are an integral part of our social interaction as well as how we place ourselves in the scheme of  things.

We love to rank things; whether it is the best restaurants in the world to the top 100 albums of all time and everything in between, because of our innate need to always have something better to shoot for. In raw terms it gives us something to live for.

Everything in our society is based on rankings from our place in the social class system to our place in the workforce. We get rewarded whenever we move up in the rankings. Sometimes those rewards are monetary and sometimes they are nothing more than public bragging rights.

In the tech blogosphere rankings is something that many like to deny even exists and if it does it isn’t important. Well they obviously haven’t yet heard of the newest type of ranking to hit all courtesy of startup Xobni and their plugin application for the Outlook email client. Apparently part of the Xobni application assigns a rank to each of your email contacts based on a ratio of incoming and outgoing email. It is the new hot game to be hitting tech related offices – who’s your number one.

This is one reason why I laugh my ass off every time someone in the tech blogosphere tries to deny or downgrade the value of the so-called Technorati Ranking system. Ya sure, the idea might offend the tender sensibility of some of the goodie two shoe bloggers but others will do it because they are doing everything to protect their ranking turf.

The problem right now in the tech blogosphere is that bloggers are getting gun shy of even having a ranking system because of this belittlement of it by those that are already at the top of the food chain. It hasn’t helped either that the basic human nature of gaming any ranking system in order to falsely increase one’s rank has also had a negative effect.

Both the protecting of top place turf and this gaming of the system has made it difficult to have an honest system for the rest of us to work with. Hell it has even scared of Technorati to the point they are destroying the company by trying to do everything they can to remove the idea of rankings.

It doesn’t matter if you change the name to something stupid like social graph or be up front and call it what it is – rankings the point is that this is a natural part of our makeup so let’s cut the crap and work towards a good honest ranking system with all the checks and balances needed to keep it honest. On top of that let’s quit lying to each other about how unimportant rankings are regardless of the bull being fed to us by those that don’t want their turf (money flow) threatened.


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What could get me to use a bloated email client?

Xobni One word – Xobni … just don’t ask me to pronounce it.

I have never been a big fan of Outlook or any of the incarnations of Microsoft’s free email clients. With Outlook the reasons are twofold – first it is a huge program with things like To Do lists, Calendaring which I realize are things that make it valuable to a hellva lot of people but I just want email. Second is its data storage and backup methodology. Everything in Outlook is stored in one *.PST file that over time can grow to a very large size and has been known to cause problems. As for a built-in backup and restore … well there is none which means you have to run a third party utility to protect your data.

That all said when I heard about Xobni I must admit I almost wanted to install Outlook just to be able to try it out even though I couldn’t because they are in limited invite only beta which I don’t have. Even so just by the demo screencast on their site I could see that this could be the one Outlook add-in application that could get me to forego my concerns about Outlook and start using it again.

While email has largely taken second place in this world of Web 2.0 social network communications it is still a primary connector for millions of people but trying to make sense of all of the varied information that comes this way can be quite daunting. With Xobni; at least from what I can see on the site you can begin to regain some control over all that information – past and present.

I have a request in for a beta invite and if I should actually get one I guess I’ll be back in the world of Outlook – if only they had a built-in backup and restore feature for Outlook that for me would be probably the clincher. In the meantime if you live in Outlook drop by their site and see what email sanity could be like.

UPDATE: apparently this post got the attention of the folks at Xobni and they were good enough to send me an invite for which I thank them. So look for a further post on Xobni after I’ve had a chance to play with it.


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