Xobni

Continuing the topic of innovation… Adam Smith and Matt Brezina founded Xobni in 2006 as a way to “take back the email inbox.” While I am not an Outlook user, this idea is awesome. Traditional email desktop applications are definitely not up to par with the standards of today’s use. I, like many others, spend a lot of time searching through emails to find past correspondence.

What are the benefits? First- it’s free! After downloading it you have a Xobni toolbar in Outlook that will improve email searches, layout past conversations in an easy to read format, it will also provide email analytics. The email analytics is the coolest part about it for me. Here you can see how you correspond with your contacts over email that will answer questions like- When will he/she get back to me? Another great email improvement xobni brings is attachment searches. I receive a large number of attachments everyday from clients, friends, and family and they tend to get lost in the mess of communication between myself and my contact. I would love to have the ability to pull out an attachment from our conversations. Xobni also schedules appointments for you and, another personal favorite, it extracts phone numbers from signatures. You then have the ability to call that number using Skype- another favorite tool! So cool! Finally, one of the more innovative features, is the idea of social networking through email. Xobni will pull out those connected to your contact and provide you with a network of people- their example is being able to “quickly identify a contact’s manager, business partner, or assistant.

Overall, whether you are a fan of Outlook or not, the people with Xobni were able to pin point a problem, or a shortcoming of today’s way of communicating and created a solution that I’m sure will continue to evolve the way we look at communicating through email. “Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that helps you organize your flooded inbox.”