LinkedIn is hoping to let its users tap into their professional network across the Web.

On Monday, LinkedIn will make its technology available to software developers who want to use it in their own sites and applications. By incorporating information about someone’s professional profile and connections, LinkedIn can make those sites more useful, said Adam Nash, LinkedIn’s vice president of search and platform products.

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive, has said he wants the site to be the hub of all conversations about business on the Web. LinkedIn’s recent partnership with Twitter was one step in that direction, and this is another. As more businesses use Web-based applications for professional communication, LinkedIn wants to be there, Mr. Nash said.

A few developers have already been experimenting with LinkedIn’s new platform. Microsoft is integrating LinkedIn into its 2010 version of Outlook e-mail. TweetDeck, the Web-based Twitter application, will let people do things like view other Twitter users’ LinkedIn profiles and post and reply to LinkedIn updates from TweetDeck.

LinkedIn has let some companies build applications on its Web site. Amazon.com, for example, shows LinkedIn users which books others in their professional network are reading and lets users post a list of recommended books.

LinkedIn has also let some developers create applications for other Web sites using its technology on a case-by-case basis. Xobni, the Outlook e-mail plug-in, pulls photos and titles from LinkedIn, for example. The New York Times Web site offers readers who are also LinkedIn members a list of articles that pertain to their industry.

“We tried to use each of those partnerships to figure out, where can LinkedIn add the most value to how you use business applications?” Mr. Nash said. “What we see happening is an increasing demand for business applications, and we think that LinkedIn uniquely has the right quality of content.”

Xobni, a very useful Microsoft Oulook plug-in (s msft) that we’ve covered with praise previously, has just released a new update that now reveals more information about your contacts, including acquiring valuable data from their Salesforce account. This has been a much-demanded feature that is available for all Xobni users for free at this time. Ultimately, there will be a small fee for this feature but the return on investment for those organizations that use Outlook and Salesforce will make the decision a no-brainer.

The other new feature that most people might have missed in a previous update (I know I did) is the ability to access each contact’s Twitter account information. This was also a very popular request from Xobni’s userbase who’ve previously been able to access their contacts’ Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Adding Twitter and SalesForce connectivity to your address book makes a great deal of sense.

Here’s an example of what the Xobni panel displays next to your email message. Not only will you see the usual information such as phone numbers, email addresses and threaded email conversations, but now you can actually view that contact’s Twitter stream (once you connect the right Twitter account, based on the email address used). Notice how you can actually send a tweet right from Xobni as well as unfollow the contact and view their Twitter profile for even more information.

Personally, I love this hot trend of infusing intelligence into our otherwise under-utilized address books. Services such as Xobni, Gist and the one that started it all, Plaxo, are providing tremendous value by allowing us to get more from our contacts. It’s baffling to me that Google has not done much with contacts in Gmail. Things will become even more interesting when (not if) Google finally adds social networking power to its address book.

Do you use Xobni?

No, this is not a BlackBerry to the left. It’s an iPhone displaying it’s LinkedIn application. If you have ever looked at this application on your BlackBerry, you likely did not look a second time. However, it’s been a big week for both of these corporate standards…….

LinkedIn: LinkedIn made several announcements this week. Their pages have gone through, may continue to be going through, a substantial redesign that places more emphasis on status updates. Can you say Twitter and FaceBook? Speaking of Twitter, you can now Tweet your status directly from LinkedIn. While this is kind of cool, I have been updating my status to LinkedIn via Ping.fm for some time now. You can also now “follow” others and, with the paid version, organize your profiles. I was at a seminar earlier this year and the presenter asked the question “How many of you have FaceBook set as your home page?”. A number of hands went up and I was frankly surprised. You actually conduct your day-to-day tasks with FaceBook being your focus? I do have to wonder how many hands would have gone up if that same question were asked about LinkedIn.

There was other big news from LinkedIn and this affects BlackBerry users. BlackBerrys like … mine. The new LinkedIn app is coming soon and it looks very much like the cool app already available for the iPhone. Read about it on the LinkedIn blog. Finally, LinkedIn has also introduced its Personal Plus paid accounts at $60 per year vs. the previously lowest price paid version of about $300 per year. Read about this on the WindMill Networking blog.

BlackBerry: Several addtional announcements were made by RIM this week including the introduction of the Storm II. As my service (T-Mobile) does not even offer the Storm I, this has little effect on me. Loopt came out with a new version of its geo location app for BlackBerry. I had installed this app a couple of weeks ago, pronounced it as being lame and a battery killer, and then was enticed to take another look. The interface has been vastly improved and I was advised by a friend, Dean Larson, to turn off the GPS when the application is not running to preserve battery power. Maybe I’m stupid but I had ass/u/med that if the application was not open, that it was not sucking juice. That would be wrrro, wrrroon, wrrroooong (smile).

Also coming soon is Xobni for the BlackBerry. I have Xobni in use with my Outlook account and just love it! Having it for my BlackBerry? Sweet! If you go to the Xobni site there is a spot where you can sign up to be notified as soon as this app becomes available.

So, it’s been a pretty exciting week for those of us who don’t have all of the coolest toys on the planet. At least we have not yet been sent to the Island of Misfit Toys but we have been close to getting our tickets (smile). This is the best thing about competition. Both LinkedIn and BlackBerry have great products that have been around a long time. Kind of like Oldsmobile. O.K., bad reference (smile). The point is that both seem to have recognized that in order to maintain their individual relevance, they need to step up their game.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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En complément de ClearContext, je vous avez parlé la semaine dernière de Xobni (INBOX à l’endroit). Ce logiciel développé par une entreprise californienne, est un add-in pour Outlook qui vous offre un nouveau moyen d’organiser et de chercher vos mails.

Pour cela, Xobni crée un profil pour chaque personne avec qui vous correspondez. Ces profils contiennent les informations sur vos contacts, connections sociales (Facebook, Twitter etc…), les conversations et les pièces attachées, nombre de mails envoyés à ce contact, nombre de mails reçus en provenance de ce contact, mais aussi numéro de téléphone.

Lorsque vous cliquez sur un mail, Xobni vous donne la fiche contact et les mails associés. Vous avez instantanément un aperçu des échanges que vous avez avec ce contact:

Maintenant, voyons la partie recherche. Vous entrez simplement des mots clés dans le menu SEARCH. Xobni affiche alors le fruit de cette recherche structurée par contact, conversations, fichiers partagés, rendez-vous et tâches.

Dans l’idée d’un moteur de recherche, vous pouvez entrer des mots clefs ou une certaine syntaxe pour cibler au plus près votre recherche. (des dates, des noms, opérations booléennes etc…).

Xobni est bien plus puissant et souple d’emploi que la fonction recherche intégrée d’Outlook. Xobni indexe en effet tous vos mails pour accélérer vos recherches. Ca se fait en tache de fond sans ralentir le système.

Une autre fonction fort appréciable de Xobni est ‘AutoSuggest’:

Lorsque vous écrivez un mail, vous tapez l’adresse de votre correspondant et Outlook vous propose des adresses mails mais uniquement si vous les avez déjà utilisées. Mais quid de celles de votre répertoire que vous n’avez encore jamais saisies ? Outlook ne vous les présentera pas. Xobni oui ! Exemple vous cherchez une adresse mail à partir d’un prénom. Xobni vous liste l’ensemble des contacts rattachés à ce prénom que vous l’ayez ou non utilisé une seule fois. Simple, puissant et rapide.

Dans l’idée de ClearContext, Xobni est en mesure de fournir un certains nombres de statistiques (email analytics): quantité de messages reçus et envoyés en fonction des jours de la semaine, des heures de la journée ou sur l’année précédente. Cela vous permet de connaître les personnes avec qui vous correspondez le plus, quelles sont vos heures où vous avez le plus de mails, qui vous répond le plus rapidement ou le plus lentement. Ces outils peuvent vous aider à vous améliorer et à corriger vos habitudes ou celles de vos collaborateurs par exemple. En complément, je vous invite à lire le post “Emails datamining” du Blog d’Olivier Ezrraty

En conclusion, Xobni est donc un excellent complément à ClearContext dans sa facilité à retrouver un élément de votre messagerie Outlook et vous évite de chercher dans tous vos répertoires, tâches, rendez-vous et contacts.

Faites en l’expérience et vous serez conquis. Une petite vidéo en anglais vous donnera un bon aperçu du logiciel.

Sachez qu’une version pour portable Blackberry est en développement et je ne manquerai pas de vous en parlez dès sa sortie.

This is a really quick post (promise) b/c I am being picked up for the airport in 25 minutes.  What is the best tool for searching in Microsoft Outlook?  Let’s admit, the native search on Outlook 2007 sucks (sorry for the potty mouth but it is the only way to describe it).  I have been using the Xobni plug in and highly recommend it.  Not only does Xobni offer lightening fast search, but it creates profiles and statistics on everyone who sends you email, including pulling pictures and information on them from sites liked Linkedin.  Now a friend of mine at a bankruptcy firm swears by a program called Look Out.  Problem is this thing is a dinosaur.  If you can find a copy to download, it basically just works as a search function.  Now maybe that is elegant and streamlined and all that, but I expect more from my tools these days.  What other Outlook tools have you found that are must haves for search and mail functions?

So, you like the idea of integrating social media into your Salesforce.com account via Gist but there is one little problem. You don’t use Salesforce. You use Outlook. Well, my friend, there’s now an app for that (smile). As a matter of fact, we are going to talk about two and both are free.

Now, in my humble opinion,. Outlook ain’t much of a CRM. Adding Business Contact Manager to it (Microsoft add-on), does not make it anymore so. That being said, I guess it all depends on what you want/need a CRM to do. For contacts, calendars, and emails … Outlook is great. Hell I use it on one of my businesses (smile). For much more than that … not so good.

Xobni makes Outlook better. It makes it a better email vehicle and now it makes Outlook “social”. And it does an excellent job at both. I have been using Xobni since probably the first of the year. It organizes my inbox, threads email conversations, tracks file exchanges, and has a lighting fast search. It pulls up contact information right within its unobtrusive side bar next to my Outlook inbox. Now, they have decided to make it more social. Social as in “social media”.

A couple of months ago Xobni integrated FaceBook, Hoovers, and LinkedIn into their product. A couple of weeks ago they added Twitter. I can look at my contact’s Twitter and FaceBook updates. That on top of everything else Xobni does. Xobni may be “inbox” spelled backwards. I spell it “sweet”.

Here is a partial screen shot so as to not show too much contact information. At the top of Xobni’s contact bar you will also find contact information and phone numbers (not shown). The Xobni bar is the second column from the right:

Since we are on Outlook, I did want to remind you of an excellent tool available from LinkedIn.  If you look in the second column from the left of the above screen shot your will see a little blue blurb above the body of that email. That “blurb” (I’m really sorry about the resolution!) is the LinkedIn “info” bubble. Hover your pointer over that and it will open up and tell you: whether or not that individual is registered with LinkedIn, how may connections they have, what degree connection you might be related, and how many recommendations they have. LinkedIn has also made it convenient for you to invite that contact to connect with you on LinkedIn right from within this interface.

This toolbar is available by clicking here. It also does some other cool things. It has a feature called “Grab” that will allow you to highlight the signature line on an incoming email and create a contact within Outlook automatically. It will also take a look at your inbox and update existing contact information. The dashboard includes reminders of folks you may should be getting back to as it relates to previous exchanges.

I’m going to cut this post off here. These are two great tools for Outlook. I encourage you to go forth and ….explore (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Don’t trust everything you read online, Twitter talks to Microsoft and Google about data mining, using social media to choose amongst prospective employees, great website including xobni an email add on, Google Docs to replace Microsoft Office can also be used as a collaborative tool allowing many people to work simultaneously on one document and lots more as Morris Miselowski joins Adelaine, Zulfikar ABC Today Show’s co hosts and Phil in Hong Kong in their weekly Future Tech segment. Recorded live 9 October 2009.

The Twitter monster just keeps on growing.  You can’t stop it.  Really.  You just cannot stop Twitter.  You also can’t beat it, at least Microsoft Outlook thinks so.  So when you can’t beat it, join it.  In what should turn into an interesting story, Xobni (an e-mail management software) has created a Twitter plug-in for Outlook.  Seems like an inevitable step, as Xobni has already shown success with Facebook and LinkedIn plugs, but it is exciting for Twitter fans.  For businesses who are scared to embrace social media in their organizations?  Probably not as exciting.  But one thing this news does show is that short-form communication could have a big effect on the future of e-mail.  

We want to extend our thanks to Tom Trenz for speaking to us about LinkedIn at our last meeting. He showed us an Outlook plugin, called xobni, that lets you track conversation across multiple social networks. However only about 30% of the people in the room use Outlook.

Earlier this year, I asked the readers of this blog and those who follow me on Twitter what the one app was that they couldn’t live without. Among the most common names offered up were Evernote, Remember The Milk and Dropbox.

Since then, those three apps have become indispensable to me as well. And they all happen to be benefiting from the business model championed by venture capitalist Fred Wilson known as “freemium.” They’re not alone — numerous companies have walked down the freemium path since he first wrote about it in 2006, among them Freshbooks, Jott.com, Box.net and of course, the granddaddy of them all, Flickr.com. More recently, San Francisco-based startup Xobni eschewed the ad-supported model to go the freemium route.

One of my old editors, Damon Darlin, now at The New York Times, over the weekend wrote about the success being enjoyed by Evernote. And it in reading Damon’s article, the qualities of a successful freemium product finally became clear to me.

As Darlin notes, Evernote is making about $79,000 a month from its paid services –- not enough to turn a profit. And while just 0.5 percent of its customers convert to paying the company $5 a month (or $45 a year) within 30 days of signing up for its free service, that figure rises to roughly 4 percent if users have used the free version for closer to a year. Why? Because Evernote is a digital drawer of sorts. The more you use it, the more you cram into it until — sure enough! — you have to get a bigger drawer, and that costs money. Given how in harmony the usefulness of this app and its level of engagement are with one another, Evernore more than any other app seems poised to see its customers switch to the paid model. Now all the company needs to do is figure out how to make it even easier to digitally clip and cram content.

Remember The Milk, on the other hand, is a simple to-do list, albeit one on steroids. In other words, it has a narrow but deep focus on one single domain. Not only have the folks at RTM made it dead simple to add tasks and delete complete ones, they have seamlessly integrated the most important part of any to-do list: reminders. Remember The Milk will send you reminders of your tasks in the form that works best for you: via SMS on your mobile phone, IM or email. It even mashes up the location of your tasks with a map.

However when you use the app while on the go (such as when you’re actually out running errands), its utility grows exponentially. And that is precisely what RTM charges for: its pro version includes support for mobile phones such as iPhone, BlackBerry and the Windows Mobile devices. With it, you never have to wait to be in front of your computer in order to start making a to-do list. The difference between the free and premium offerings is very clear, which as a buyer makes your decision to pay up an easy one.

Finally there’s online storage-syncing service Dropbox. While it disobeys the most basic rule of freemium — “no downloadable apps” — Dropbox more than makes up for it by being easy to install and even easier to sign up for. You start out with 2 Gb of storage space for free, which doesn’t take very long to use up. At that point you have two options: switch to another offering or buy a premium package. But while the thought of paying $120 a year to upgrade to the 50 GB package may make you balk, chances are the $9.99-a-month subscription service looks pretty affordable.

That’s why the premium versions of some of the more popular freemium apps are really subscription services. Which speaks to point No. 6, that if you encourage your customers to use your application often, the easier it will be for you to sell them something else in the future.

A few weeks ago I decided to move all my data from Dropbox to another online service, Jungledisk. The reason: I wanted to archive all my folders and information from 2008, for which I needed more storage than my current Dropbox account could offer. It was about 45 GB of data, which meant I’d have to upload it to Jungledisk, and even with a really fast connection, it would take forever. Suddenly it dawned on me that the more stuff I put on Dropbox, the more difficult it would become for me to switch to another service. Instead, I upgraded to 100 Gb a year.

Same goes from Evernote, which is becoming more valuable to me by the minute. Again, even if I wanted to go elsewhere, it wouldn’t be that easy to switch.

I’m sure there are many more ways to build great freemium applications, but one has stood out for me above all the others. It comes from Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, who tells The New York Times, “Our product is our marketing.” Indeed — that’s where it all starts — and ends.

Recommended reading: Check out Andrew Chen’s piece on how to create a profitable freemium startups.

I figured since I have been on a tech streak, I would end this series with a listing of applications that I use the most. In Taking The Inbox Bull By The Horns and Keeping A Balanced Online Social Presence you had a peek into some of the tools that I use regularly, in my everyday life.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 (Tasks, Calendar, Twittering, Email, Contact Management)

I am pretty sure that most people have heard of this, and for as many years as Microsoft Office has been around, just about everyone has tried it at some point. To be truthful, were it not for needing it for college, I would have never gotten it. The last version of Office that I had gotten was 2003, and that was because I worked with a company that receives pretty decent discounts on Microsoft products. I bought it simply because it had a price tag that made it to where I couldn’t really go wrong. I was never all that impressed with the software, but because I usually used a freeware alternative (Thunderbird) to MS Office, it helped me practice while at home.

I then started college, and had to get Office 2007. While it still is not perfect in my book, it has greatly improved over the years. I like the look and the overall function much better now. I didn’t want software that I had to buy anyway go to waste, and I found some plug-in software that works quite well with it. The first is called Xobni. Xobni is a search tool that adds a lot of interesting functionality. The second plug-in I use is TwInbox. This basically gives me the ability to send and receive Twitter through MS Outlook. The third plug-in I use is Outlook On The Desktop. This software allows me to run Outlook Calendar on my desktop, so I always have my schedule at a quick glance. The last Outlook plug-in I use is YPOPs. So far this is the software that has worked the least. This software is for bringing my Yahoo inbox over to Outlook. This is possible to do in normal circumstances, but only if you pay for premium service. So far this software has crashed almost every time, but I will continue using it until I find a better way to do Yahoo mail in Outlook.

Microsoft One Note (Note Taking, Research, Information Gathering)

When I first read the description, I never figured that I would actually use it, since I rarely really take notes on anything. Boy was I wrong, this has become one piece of software that I have found that comes in handy for many tasks. If I had to choose just one Microsoft product, this would be the one I would always keep. Right now, I am also trying a freeware alternative (Evernote). So far it is quite similar, but we will see how it all works out.

Windows Live Writer (Blogging)

While it not be as all inclusive as some of the aptly named “Pro Blogging Software” it really fits the bill for me. I wanted a stand alone blogger, and something that had neater html coding than say Microsoft word. I needed my Asus EEE 1000HA to be able to run all the other programs, as well as blog, all while being mobile, oh … and not be a memory hog. Wow that is a really tall order to fill, but MS Live writer does it on here all the time, and it is freeware! I know, I am a taskmaster, but if it is going to be on my computer, it needs to be good at more than just one thing.  The plug-ins that I use most on it are: Tags – Used to insert delicious tags at the top of each post. Text Template – Used to add text that I use a lot of, such as the messages I add to every post. Twitter Notify – as apposed to logging in to twitter to tweet a message about the new post, when I publish the post, this automatically creates a tweet telling everyone who follows me that there is a new post here on Bouncerman.com, as well as a link to the new post.

Google Chrome (Browser)

I used to use Firefox as my main browser, but for some reason my Asus didn’t play well with it. Internet explorer did ok (normally) but when I switched to IE8 it was never the same. With Chrome, I easily blaze a path on the internet.

Image and Video Editing

At the moment I am still experimenting until I find something that I really like.

Maintenance

A well maintained computer causes fewer headaches, which is good, because I don’t like buying Tylenol. I personally use CCleaner to clean things up, and Smart Defrag for defragging when it needs it. Yes, Windows has utilities built in already, but in my opinion, the utilities I use work much more efficiently.

Leave comments if you know something that may work better, or just want to share what you use!

Questions that you would like answered, comments or suggestions regarding the site itself, email me at Bouncerman@Bouncerman.com

AbiWord, a dedicated, easy-to-use word processor, can handle any basic word-wrangling task you throw at it.

The interface is straightforward, so you won’t need to waste time getting lost in ribbons or multilevel menus. Simple icons and menus across the top of the page give you access to all of the program’s features, and there are many of them. The application performs mail merges; inserts page numbers, the date and time and other auto text; and provides some very nice table tools. On top of all that, it can insert and handle images.

Be aware that the program has some drawbacks; for one thing, it won’t support the newest .docx Office file format. Still, if you don’t need to work with .docx files, give this freebie a try.

Download AbiWord | Price: Free

A personal information manager (PIM) can help you maintain your schedule and to-do list, keep track of your contacts and create outlines as you brainstorm.

EssentialPIM Free is an excellent PIM choice for anyone who doesn’t want to spend any money. Exceptionally simple to use, it offers just about everything you could want. Scheduling recurring events is a breeze and prioritizing your to-do lists is easy. The note taker is nifty, too, and the app even has a surprisingly good built-in e-mail client.

The program also imports data from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, allows you to configure its look and feel and provides printing options. The creators offer a for-pay version, which has additional features such as synchronization with mobile devices, Outlook and Google Calendar. But if you don’t need advanced features, the free version is a great bet.

Download EssentialPIM Free | Price: Free

The name of this program says it all: It lets you create sticky notes on your PC similar to the paper Post-It notes that litter people’s offices. Just double-click the program’s icon in your system tray and it makes a note for you. Type in whatever you want to remember and you’re done. You can drag the note to any location on your desktop.

Want to change the font or the text color? You can do that and make the text bold or italic. How about changing the note’s color? Yes, you can do that, too, and you can change its opacity. You also can hide notes, print them and even automatically send their text via e-mail.

Overall, Simple Sticky Notes is straightforward and a snap to use — and it won’t waste your time.

Download Simple Sticky Notes | Price: Free

Chances are, you spend a big chunk of your workday going through your e-mail. Free office suites such as OpenOffice.org don’t have an e-mail client, while Microsoft Office does, in Outlook.

Thunderbird, a product of Mozilla, the same group that develops Firefox, offers a slew of high-end e-mail features, yet is extremely simple to use. In addition to all the standard e-mail features, it can encrypt messages, digitally sign messages and create filters for handling mail automatically when it arrives. It even supports RSS feeds and newsgroups, so you can keep up on the latest blogs, news and discussions. If you already have an e-mail client, Thunderbird will import your existing settings, so switching over is effortless.

Unlike Outlook, Thunderbird has no calendar, to-do list or other PIM features. If you need those, check out EssentialPIM Free, described above.

Download Thunderbird | Price: Free

If you already use Outlook but you want to improve your productivity and reduce e-mail overload, here’s the best way to do it. Xobni cuts through e-mail clutter, makes keeping in touch easier and streamlines searching for messages and contacts.

The program works as an Outlook add-on. When you need to use Xobni, it slides out from the right side of Outlook; when you’re done with it, the app hides away.

The program indexes all of your e-mail and its search is faster than the one built into Outlook. For each of your e-mail messages, it gives information about the person with whom you’re conversing, including a threaded list of every e-mail between the two of you. It also provides a list of every file you’ve exchanged, as well as the person’s phone number and “social network,” which is a list of people with whom the person has exchanged e-mail. Xobni integrates with the social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn and it grabs information about your contacts from those sites, too.

You’ll find a lot more in this program, including analytics tools that report personal statistics such as the average amount of time you take to respond to people by day, month and week.

Download Xobni | Price: Free

zoegriffin.co.uk

O.K., I lied. I think there are about 16 here (smile). About a month ago I did a post entitled “10 Tools That Make My Life Worth Living”.  A lot more cool toys have surfaced since that time so here is my updated list (in alphabetic order):

GizaPage: Think of GizaPage has your own personal webpage that directs others to all of your social media sites including Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, or any other place that you might have a profile or some sort of presence. So, instead of providing all these addresses you just say www.craigmjamieson.gizapage.com. That’s it. Simple and easy. Someone I spoke to told me that I could also do that on FriendFeed, and you can, but for this purpose, I like the GizaPage format better. I also discovered another interesting function of GizaPage while I was just trying some things out. When you log onto my Twitter tab, it takes you to an app called TweeTree. I have never heard of it but it looks a lot like a standard Twitter page. But, get this, it is also calling up the actual link content that you include in your tweets. For example, a couple of my recent tweets were for new blog postings. These are generated automatically by TwitterFeed along with a link to the post. TweetTree not only shows the tweet, it also shows the post itself including the Jing videos. Sweeet!!!

HootSuite: HootSuite is a lot like TweetLater in that you can schedule tweets to go out on a delayed schedule. It’s is also like TweetDeck in that you can use it to monitor your Twitter activity. And, it has some other cool tools. I am hoplessly in love with it’s FireFox toolbar button called the “Hootlet”. When reading a page you’d like to share, click on the Hootlet button and a tweet is created, the url is shortened, and you can send the tweet now or schedule it for later. And do all of this while never leaving the page you are reading. They should really call this thing HootSweeeet (smile).

Google Reader: There is simply no other way to keep up with advancements and introductions in Social or Business-Social Media without some sort of a reader. Having this allows me to be automatically notified of all new blog or otherwise postings from some of my favorite sources. I have reader on my iGoogle Home page and it shows me headlines of each article and the source, I can then read a short version of the article right there, and then go to the original web article if desired. No need to try to remember to check back to see if there is anything new. A reader is indispensable and easy to maintain. Follow folks for awhile and, if they suck, delete them (smile).

iGoogle Home Page: I love my iGoogle Home Page. For me, displayed in one easy to see and manage area I have: Gmail, multiple news feeds, weather, stocks, a muti-column task list, a calendar, and my Google Reader. Of course, I can search or access Google Docs or Google Sites. There are so many add-ons and widgets you can get, it’s tough to count them. Convenient and comprehensive.

PrintFriendly: I am hopelessly in love with paper and Canon and Weyerhauser are hopelessly in love with me (smile). I like the feel of paper. I like to take it places with me. I like seeing it on my desk. What I don’t like is printing out a web page and getting a lot of junk and a lot of extra pages. PrintFriendly takes care of that for me and will even allow me to create a .pdf of the page. Since my first posting about this tool, PrintFriendly has gotten even friendlier by adding the capabilities to also tweet and email pages. Invaluable and, one of my favorite widgets (smile).

Toolbars for Outlook: If you use Outlook and LinkedIn, you would be nuts not to add the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook. It is as much an invaluable assist to Outlook as it is to LinkedIn as it allows you to grab email signature lines and create Outlook contacts and it will also merge and edit existing contacts. On the LinkedIn side, it allows you to send invites to incoming emails contacts without ever leaving Outlook. There is more, of course. Try it out. Xobni, “Inbox” spelled backwards is another tool for Outlook. It does a lot of things including integrating with LinkedIn, FaceBook, and some other Social Media sites but may be even better for tracking email conversation threads and general email searches. Very slick.

TweetDeck: Seesmic is coming on fast but I still like TweetDeck. I just like the look and the feel of it. It is easy to use and the layout makes sense to me and it keeps getting better. Competition has a way of doing that (smile). What I really like is the ability to search on keyword Tweets from outside my immediate network as it helps me to find folks that seem to be worth following. What I don’t like is that I can only show 4 columns on my screen at any time. It would be nice if you could either stack them or make them narrower. Seesmic does at least have the ability to save searches and then bring them up as needed whereas with TweetDeck you either have to delete and add columns or move them left and right with those lame arrows (smile). Seesmic also has “drag and drop” on columns.

TweetLater: Man, do I ever love this thing (smile). TweetLater allows me to pre-write and schedule Tweets to go out on specific dates and times. What’s cool about it is that there are certain kinds of Tweets that, for me at least, this works very well for. I like to Tweet funny quotes, inspirational quotes, and links to pages on this site. So, what I do is pre-write 4-5 Tweets per day (usually on a Sunday) and then I am covered for the week regardless. Then I just add a Tweet here and there during the day that is more time sensitive and pertinent. It’s free (everything I’m talking about in this post is free), easy to use, and ………. a life saver for a lame Tweeter like me (smile)! And, I will tell you that once I started using Tweetlater, page views on this site have since doubled. Got to love that (smile).

VodPod: I’m calling out VodPod specifically because of it’s approved status as a WordPress widget. However, VodPod is being used by me primarily as a transport vehicle for other files not allowed by WordPress. VodPod provides me with the ability to embed video files in a post and have them run within that post or, I can also place them on the sidebar widget .  This includes slide shows. The slide shows themselves are being created through Slide.com and I am using Jing to create the instructional video files. In working with Jing, files are actually first saved to Screencast.com. And, believe me, Jing is a way cool tool. Finally, VodPod also has this cool browser tool bar button that will capture a video on a web page and allow me to either post it directly to WordPress or send it to my post editior to add info or save it as a draft.

Zemanta: 90% of the links on this post come courtesy of Zemanta. Suggested articles below, same source. “Reblog” badge. Same. Let me tell you, this has saved me an enormous amout of time in terms of research and copying and pasting. And, it also works the same for my Gmail. What really surprised me is that just by installing the Firefox Browser version (there is also a WordPress.org plug-in), it integrated itself seamlessly into my WordPress.com account and .com accounts do not allow plug-ins that are not part of the WordPress package itself. Don’t ask me how this works ’cause I don’t care (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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We’ve previouslycovered the impressive Microsoft Outlook add-on Xobni (s msft). The company behind it has just released a new premium edition of the product called, appropriately enough, Xobni Plus, available for a one-time fee of $29.95. There are a number of productivity-boosting features that are exclusive to the new edition.

Social Inbox

Xobni Plus reveals a great deal about your contacts, and provides instant access to their profiles on some of the most popular social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. This can really come in handy when trying to connect with a new colleague, partner or customer.

I like how these services are integrated with the Xobni interface; with one click you can either add them as a contact on the service or go to the site for more information. The exciting part is that Xobni is continuing to add more popular services, such as Skype.

Another feature that I like is the integrated Google (s goog) search box; it’s very useful for instant access to a Google search for that particular contact.

I must admit that it’s impressive how many useful features Xobni was able to cram into such tiny screen real estate without making it look too cluttered.

SmartMail

Xobni Plus includes some interesting new options that give Microsoft Outlook some much-needed smarts. For example, right out of the gate you’ll notice the much-improved autocompletion feature while filling out the “to” field for a new email message. Outlook is extremely feeble-minded when it comes to filling that address out, seemingly only supplying the most recent of most-used email addresses. Xobni Plus provides a boatload of names to choose from thanks to its powerful new search engine, which indexes all contacts, including those only found in the “cc:” field. Another useful time-saver is the way it can find an email address just by typing a part of an address, such as the company name.

These are all features that Outlook should have built in by now. Over the course of a few days, these seemingly small time-savers made a big difference to my productivity.

Search and Rescue

Also available in the Plus edition is a souped-up search feature. You can not only search for contacts but also any keyword or phrases in the subject and message body. There’s also an advanced search query builder for ultra-detailed searches.

There’s also the very handy ability to search and filter within threaded conversations and within each contact’s network, which would allow you to look for that colleague of one of your contacts that you have forgotten the name of, for example.

The Bottom Line

Here are some other benefits that come with the Plus edition:

• One year of tech support
• No ads
• Multiple .PST file search

The free version of Xobni is very useful and might be sufficient for many people’s needs. However, for power email users, Xobni Plus offers more than enough features to warrant the one-time expense of $29.95 (with a charge of $9.95 for each additional computer you want to use it on).

If you’re a Xobni user, will you be upgrading to Plus?

While web-based companies like Facebook and Twitter have yet to operate on earned income, a string of others have adopted the freemium business model, which involves offering a paid premium service in addition to what’s already being offered for free. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson outlined the attributes of the freemium model in a 2006 blog post, citing Flikr (s yhoo) and Skype (s ebay) as examples of companies that had already embraced it. Xobni’s launch of its new Xobni Plus paid service today highlights the rise of the freemium model as companies look for ways to make money online.

Many startups have gone freemium over the years, among them Jott, whose service translates spoken messages into text and inserts them into email and other web services; online storage service provider Box; Evernote, which allows users to store notes in the cloud; career web site LinkedIn and Internet radio provider Pandora.

Xobni, which makes software that helps people organize their Microsoft (s msft) Outlook accounts, has been planning to introduce a paid service for awhile. (For an outline of the new features on Xobni Plus, watch this video.). Co-founder Matt Brezina said the company was inspired by LogMeIn’s paid system and even received consulting advice from the remote services technology provider, which went public last month. Moreover, Brezina said the company was unwilling to take the traditional, ad-supported route. “When you build a business model around advertising, your customers are the advertisers, so you do things the advertisers want,” he explained. “If you build a business model around service products…the customers are the user and you end up giving the user what they want.”

But startups aren’t the only ones making the switch to freemium. Under pressure from cheaper and free services on the web like Google Apps, even Microsoft will begin offering a mix of free and paid services with Microsoft Office 2010. The free version of the Office suite of products, which offers less functionality than the paid version, will be available on Windows Live.

Haven’t heard of Xobni?  Its a plug-in that can really save you time!  I stumbled across it while using LinkedIn.  You can find people and email quickly with this tool, and it can improve your productivity.  What Xobni does is index the email in Outlook so you can find it about 50X faster.  With the option to connect to profiles in LinkedIn & Facebook, you will see the employer, job title & photo when sending or receiving email.  You’ll also have immediate access to their profile.  Your conversations will be threaded based upon the subject line to make it easier to spot who said what & when.  Xobni will find attachments by person too. 

It works as a sidebar in Outlook and acts as an automatic address book.  Look for a person and it will also display their phone number.  The sidebar displays recent emails and will find attachments by person too.  When you are looking at attachments it will place the most recent at the top of the list so if you have exchanged a few versions, you can can grab the current version quickly.  There’s even a search in the attachments if you need to look through the results list. 

A few other great features include Hoovers & Skype connectivity. But my favorite things are the statistics and email analytics.  From here you can tell what day you are slowest to respond to email and who you email most often. You can view what times your contacts send you emails most often, so you know when they are on-line and likely to pick up the phone.

The biggest drawback is it can create volumes of traffic on your Microsoft Exchange server.  In order to install it you’ll need admin privledges and if running off a Exchange server, you’ll want to use what’s called cached exchange mode.  If your administrator says no, don’t feel you’re locked out… you can still use it on your personal computer at home.

YCombinator

People do incredible things when they are asked to. Many ideas get lost because they are never looked for. Y Combinator seems to  have figured out how to create web startups that do something meaningful. They approach starting companies from the perspective of right now. The web finally beginning to morph into something that we haven’t imagined and they have the pulse.

eyeonannapolis.net

I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately talking about the impending doom of email, at least as we know it. Love it or hate it, I believe that some form of this communication medium will be with us for many years to come. Certainly, products like the soon to be released Google Wave may change the way we look at, and use, electronic messaging. For now, for me, email is indispensable.

A little background may help. I work out of my home and have two positions. Standing and sitting (smile). I am an independent sales contractor for Lytle Signs and, while they have an office here in the Boise area, the company headquarters are 125 miles away in Twin Falls, ID. 90% of all design, estimating, manufacturing, and accounting takes place in Twin Falls. Also, at least 50% of my client base is not located in the Boise area. Consequently, almost all of my correspondence is done via email. As is a large percentage of my general communication.

My other job is operating this website and the B2B networking group that it supports, NetWorks! Once again, email is a critical part of this formula. Finally, I do not own a smart phone. All my emailing functions are conducted on my desktop PC. I had a Blackberry about 5 years ago and the happiest day of my life was when I turned it in (smile). Will I have one in the future? Probably, but I’m going to hold out on that as long as possible.

So, if we are going to be using email, let’s make it work for us instead of the other way around. Here are 2 tools and 7 tips to help you accomplish that goal and, at the same time, how you can turn common email messages into powerful selling tools:

Let’s start with a couple of tools for Outlook:

1. If you use Outlook. you have to add the Xobni toolbar. Here are a few of the things that make this so invaluable: Xobni interfaces with both Facebook and LinkedIn and will provide you with a portal to contact info from both, it tracks your conversations with this contact (and has some neat copy and paste tools of these conversations), it tracks files exchanged with this contact, and it also identifies people within their network that you also commonly exchange emails with. Very cool.
2. And, if you use Outlook and LinkedIn, the Outlook Toolbar for LinkedIn is an absolute must. With this you can: go directly to LinkedIn while still in Outlook, look at individual emails in your inbox and it will identify if the incoming email is registered with LinkedIn and, if yes, how you might be connected, send invitations to connect on LinkedIn, “grab” email signature lines and create new Outlook Contacts, and have the toolbar automatically update, and create, new records in both Outlook and LinkedIn. Also, very cool (smile).

Now let’s go to some tips and tricks:

1. We’ll start with manners. If a client sends me an email, they are generally looking for some fast answers. Let me ask you this question: How often have you sent an email to a client or a co-worker and waited days for a response if one ever comes at all? Do you wonder if they even got it? I do, and I see it all the time. And, I mean all the time. Now, and be honest, how quickly do you respond to emails even if to just acknowledge them and let folks know that you are working on the task? I would say, if it is more than an 8 hour day, you probably suck in the eyes of your client. Sorry, is what it is. Rapid responses to client emails say that you are a professional and that you value their communication. I won’t shut down my computer for the day until all emails have been answered regardless of the time it takes to do so.
2. Send emails out late at night, early early in the morning, and on weekends. Nothing says “I love you” like an overtime email (smile).
3. Copy clients on correspondence concerning them. Say a client asks you a question that you do not know the answer to. Of course, that is always “I don’t know the answer but will find out.” Immediately an email goes out to those who can answer the question and guess who gets copied oh this correspondence? The client. It shows that you have followed through, in a timely manner, it demonstrates transparency regarding the subject, it lets those who are getting the email know that the client also knows who they are (I love that part), and the client loves being a part of that communication! Seriously. Sometimes I just do it. Sometimes I ask. Sometimes I do it and then ask ……. “Would you like me to copy you on these types of messages or just as soon be left out of the loop?” 100% of my clients have said “Yes, please include me.”
4. Use email to be proactive in informing your clients on project progress. Sometimes, as with sign permitting for example, time frames needed to accomplish the task can be extended. And, you know, the client is always wondering what the status is. Why not surprise them with an email that tells them just what’s up instead of waiting for them to ask? You have just separated yourself from the rest of the “shaved apes” (smile).
5. Please, please, use out of office reply. If you are going to be unable to have access to email, let your clients know that, when you will return, and who they can go to for immediate help. Until recently, Lytle Sign’s webmail system did not have this feature. To get Outlook to do it you need to be on an exchange server although there are some ways to mickey mouse around that. If you do not have out of office capability, take the time to send emails to your active and good clients and let them know that you will be gone and for what period of time. Them getting this email says one thing and that one thing is critical… “You, my client, are important to me.”  I’ve also noticed an added benefit. Every time I do this probably 10% of my clients will email me back and ask me to get back with them about another project that they had been meaning to discuss with me. Perfect! (smile)
6. Watch who your clients copy on their correspondence to you. Very powerful. Knowing who’s who is invaluable. Make it a point to get to know these folks also. For one thing, and this is Sales 101, you are expanding your contacts within a specific account. Should your key contact every disappear, you have back ups to go to. These contacts may be from outside the company. As an example, in the sign business, I often need to deal with contractors from a variety of trades, engineers from a variety of disciplines, architects, designers, landscape architects, the list goes on and on. Often these folks are part of a continuing construction team. Being considered to be a part of that team means: access to non-publicized information like new projects at an extremely early phase, the kind of response and cooperation given to team members vs. wannabes, and finally, guess what? These folks also work for other companies. And they like to travel together because they know what they can expect from each other. These folks are also copied on most emails I send regarding specific projects. If you want to be a member of the team, act like you already are (smile).
7. How about using email to say “thank you” or to congratulate someone on a recent promotion or accomplishment that you read about.  You will be one of the few (smile).

Well, I’ve bored you enough with my ranting and raving (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

This past weekend more than 3,500 attendees flocked Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara convention center to attend the 16th edition of Tiecon, billed as the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs.

And unlike its peers, Tiecon – which theme focused on the “The Bold Entrepreneur” – has done better this year than last, attracting about 20 percent more people according to the organizers.

The energy at the conference was high and networking opportunities abundant, with more than 150 speakers attending (from entrepreneurs to VCs) in more than 50 sessions.

“This is the year to innovate and start a company. The current macro-economic environment is a unique opportunity for the bold entrepreneur,” said the conference c0-chairs, Shaukat Shamim and Gara Gauba.

For the first time this year, Tiecon organisers honored their top 50 “hottest” emerging startups in 5 segments (Tie50), out of 1,200 nominated and after 50,000 votes!