This week I installed VMWare Fusion, Windows, and Outlook 2007 on my Mac to try out Xobni. I heard that Xobni was supposed to be the ultimate social networking app so naturally my interest was peaked.
The way the software works is by indexing your Outlook inbox in an effort to find facts, statistics, and otherwise undefined social networks. During the install it provides you with some interesting facts about the people that you email with, such as who replies to your emails you the quickest. After install it provides when a new email arrives, it shows you a communication history with that person. This includes past conversations, attachments, and any contact details that can be gleaned from the email. The software also allows you to search your emails and communications. The search function works much faster that the one that comes with Outlook. Today, Xobni added a new feature that automatically grabs info from LinkedIn. This info includes photos, names, titles, etc.
There are some things that I would like to see changed. The first of which is a Mac version that integrates with Entourage or Apple Mail. gMail integration would also be nice.
The second feature I would like to see is a “Check for Updates” button. When the new version with the LinkedIn integration was announced I wanted to install it and try it out. After visiting the Xobni website I saw that the software should “automatically update”, I thought “awesome, I can go tell it to update and be on my way”. As it turns out, there is no what to check for updates and install them manually. So I was forced to download a new copy of the install app. When I went to install it, I was told that I had to remove the old one first. After removing the old one, I reinstalled it, only to find that it had to rebuild the internal database. What a pain.
In all, the software is not bad, although I am not sure that I could not live without it.
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