Xobni = inbox control and utilization (for Outlook users)

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge hype guy when it comes to new tools for my PC, but a friend of mine in sales at Microsoft mentioned this product (it’s free here) as a tool that a few of the sales reps there are using to help with their contact and connection management with MS Outlook.

I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, but I’ve gotten a lot of value from it as I am able to quickly pull up email histories with clients and candidates and the fact that it tracks all documents and extracts phone numbers from the text of the email allowing you to immediately get the contacts number instead of shifting into the contacts page is very handy.

As for installation it’s easy, but I would suggest doing it over lunch as it slows down the PC a little and will limit your ability to use the rest of your software as it loads & categorizes all your email data.

Of course if you’re not an Outlook user don’t worry they are planning on expanding Xobni’s reach to various e-mail programs like Yahoo Mail, Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail as well as social networks like Facebook and Linkedin.

Of course if you don’t believe me you can check out other articles about the product at the NY Times, TechCrunch and even the YouTube video of Bill Gates showcasing the product.

Comment by Robert Godden on June 25, 2008 at 7:33pm: I'm a big user of Xonbi, and it is superb. Love the stats feature! That and twirl are my two favourite utilities!

Comment by Nancy Ford on June 26, 2008 at 3:33pm: BILL!!!!! I'm not a "gadget" person and I am sure that I don't use my Outlook as effectively as I could. But let me tell you - this tool is AWESOME!!!!!!! It's so easy too, you download, you install. It does the rest. And let me tell you - it's already made my work day SO MUCH EASIER!!! I absolutely love it. Thank you so much for writing about this and drawing my attention to it. Seriously - this really is better than sliced bread. :)

Comment by bill martineau on June 26, 2008 at 4:00pm: I wish I could take more credit, but after I heard about it and like it I thought it would definitely be useful for a lot of other recruiters.

Comment by Kumar Bodapati on June 26, 2008 at 10:45pm: Bill you are awesome thanks a lot, it is really helping me out in my daily recruiting work.

Kumar
Geonine Inc

Comment by bill martineau on June 27, 2008 at 9:49am: Kumar,

Thanks, but again no credit for me other than sharing what I know with others. Hopefully when the next good tool or technique comes down the road someone will pass it along to us.

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