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Plugin enables useful social features in Outlook


Spell “inbox” backwards and you get “xobni”.  It is a creative name for a company that develops an increasingly useful Microsoft Outlook plugin.  Xobni indexes all the e-mail stored locally within Outlook and remotely in Exchange servers.  It then makes connections between recipients and social portals like Facebook and Linkedin.

Lets say John Doe is one of your contacts.  You will be able to view John’s Facebook profile picture and additional public information by simply highlighting an e-mail received from him.  You will also get a listing of past conversations. Continue reading “Plugin enables useful social features in Outlook”

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Detach from ISP’s e-mail addresses

A short time ago a colleague thought of switching Internet service providers (ISP).  He had had the same provider for many years and therefore was using the provider assigned e-mail address.  The problem, he would loose his long time e-mail address when changing providers.  Addressess like @att.net, @bellsouth.net, @comcast.net, and many others are basically rented from the provider and only available to use if using the ISP.  The solution is to use an independent e-mail address like the ones provided by Google’s GMail, Microsoft’s Live, Yahoo, and others.  These addresses are usually free and allow the use of an e-mail client like Outlook, Apple Mail, or Entourage.  It will not matter if changing the ISP in the future or move to a different geographic location, you can keep the same e-mail address.  Many ISP’s allow for the forwarding of their e-mail address to an alternate one.  In other words, you could forward all e-mails from @comcast.net to your new @gmail.com account during a transition period.  The old ISP e-mail address will not be needed after a few months of using your new e-mail address

Better yet, you could register your own domain name.  Domain names are relatively inexpensive with many providers offering custom domains and e-mail hosting for a few dollars a month.  Providers like Network Solutions, Register.com, and GoDaddy are some good ones.