Xobni is a new plugin for Outlook 2007 users and it kicks your email capabilities ass. That’s right Brandon, even GMail.
Xobni’s functionality includes:
• Email search. Way faster than the current Outlook07 search. When I started typing in the first two or three letters in Xobni it immediately began pulling up emails with those letters used. It has been a time saver because Outlook takes forever to search through 2 years of emails. With Xobni, it’s pulling them up in seconds.
• Email Analyticss. Fancy little graph showing you the frequency of email usage between you and your contact. Below the graph, it shows you the number of messages sent in and out and the contacts rank based on that number.
• Click-to Functions. Click on their phone number, click to schedule time with person (creates a default email and pulls your availability from your calendar!), or click to email this person.
• Linkedin. If your contact has a Linkedin profile, their information (Company & Title) is shown above the network. Click on the Linkedin logo and your browser will open and take you to that person’s profile.
• Network. Shows you all the people you and that person are associated with.
• Conversations. Shows you the history of correspondence between you and that person. How easy!
• Files Exchanged. Shows you all the files you and that person have exchanged. How convenient!
• Fun Facts. Share fun facts with your contacts, such as who responds the fastest to your emails.
I have a feeling I am going to be a promoter of this tool for a while, or at least until everyone in our Company is using it. Xobni is a snapshot of history with your contacts, without any extra links to click. The tool creates instant satisfaction because it’s information accessible NOW. Outlook is now easier & more fun with a tool like this one.
Xobni is based in San Francisco and was founded by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina in 2006. Xobni is the word Inbox spelled backward. Their mission is “to “take back” the email inbox for our users.” I believe they are on the right track.
Download Day 2008 has been launched by Mozilla Firefox to beat the Guinness Book of Records for most downloads in one day. Their goal is to reach 5 million downloads. As of 4:08pm CST the total number of downloads is 2,623,432. There is even a map of total region downloads and a rollover feature for each country’s total downloads. Sleek.
There are over 15,000 new features in Firefox 3, including:
One-click bookmarking
“Awesome Bar” which recommends sites that you have visited before
Better security
Easy to use password management
Simplified add-on installation
Improved performance of speed and memory usage
I just installed ScreenGrabber. The screen grabber function allows you to save/copy the whole screen, visible portion, or selection (like the image above) to your folder or desktop. The whole process took less than 10 seconds.
Mozilla’s open source project started back in 1998. Today it’s known as Mozilla Corporation. The Company has over 800 code contributors, supports 35 languages, and has 3 affiliates in China, Europe and Japan.
Update: As of June 29, 2008, 13 days after Mozilla launched Firefox 3, the total number of downloads has reached 25,462,056. That’s equivalent to 1.9 million downloads per day, 81.6 thousand per hour, 1.3 thousand per minute, and 22 downloads per second.
The website will take you to a white page with one of two words: YES or NO. Click on the word and find yourself in the MP3 section of Amazon. The song: Celebration by Kool & the Gang, which was the groups only #1 hit. What are they trying to say here? [Raise eyebrow].
Everyone seems to have their own feeling about twitter being down. Gaping Void: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” had this to draw:
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, had this to say about Twitter being down:
…(honestly, it’s news when they keep the site live for 24 hours at this point). But, seriously, they need to get their act together. It’s past embarrassing.
I follow Arrington on Twitter (@TechCrunch). Arrington relies heavily on Twitter to get his blog posts out there. He’s like the Perez Hilton for web gossip & news.
With all the opinion attacks and jokes about Twitter, I have this to say:
Information is priceless. Especially in our generation and in our time. There is a lot happening in this world; some that are beyond our control, others that we cannot seem to control, and everything else. Twitter is the nature of how we respond to mass communication these days. We want it fast, now, and then to move on. Life doesn’t always take that into consideration and things are a lot more complex than the simple Twitter post. The post is quick, but your thoughts about it can live on.
Since drafting this blog a couple of days ago, Twitter has done its efforts to tweak the kinks and they seem to be running smoother than ever. You might see me on Twitter throughout the day and some have inquired who I follow. Here are some interesting people and why I follow them:
@jowyang - always finds some good blog posting or research study about the web. Jeremiah is a web strategist who lives in San Francisco.
@BreakingNewsOn - Up to the minute news coverage 24/7. For when I don’t feel like reading NYT on my phone, I’ll Twitter for a brief and quick update.
@ramit - has a blog on personal finance and entrepreneurship. I follow him for updates and he will sometimes post finance tools or articles on saving or investing. Ramit Sethi graduated from Stanford and is the co-founder and VP of marketing for PBwiki.
Obvious launched Twitter in October 2006 and broke off to form Twitter, Inc in April 2007. Jack Dorsey is the CEO and you can follow him @jack.
Chumby is here! Your morning is now personalized on your alarm clock.
Chumby is the latest in alarm clock technology. It’s changing the way we wake up in the morning. The lovable bean bag filled alarm clock is the size of a coffee mug and feeds you up-to the minute headline news. Or rather you prefer checking the weather, traffic, Facebook updates, latest images from I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER, or perhaps you need your Chuck Norris facts fix before you start your day. Whatever you need to get you up in the morning, chances are Chumby has the answer.
Chumby costs $180 and is available in black, latte and pearl. The device connects to your wireless home network, and has touch screen and motion sensor capabilities. The user is able to download widgets (over 700 available) & customize their Chumby directly from the website. Chumby is a Linux-based, open source platform. If you are a flash animator, feel free to show off your talents by building your own widget and submitting it on Chumby’s site for others to use. The site also has a Wiki, community forum, blog, and showcase page where you can submit and view pictures and videos of Chumby’s everywhere.
If you’re a visual person, watch this video. If you are short on time, fast forward to the 2:00 minute mark for the demonstration.
Chumby Industries, Inc. is a privately held company located in San Diego, CA.
As a designer, I rely on my vision to impart a hierarchy of data within web pages. It takes a jarring reminder from the smart folks at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival to remind me that not everyone can see the colors I painstakingly deliberate over, the varied and specific shades that I cross-browser test for universal appeal. Even color contrast can be lost to a slight case of color-blindness.
Assistive technologies are on the rise, and we learned about a full spectrum that are available now.
The single most important thing about your website is not it’s functionality or usability, it’s not the marketing behind it our the hours your team spent developing the single most important thing about your website is good design. No matter how you slice it if you can’t engage your traffic beyond that initial 8 second first impression all the clever bells and whistles in the world won’t equate to additional page views and conversions. So I reiterate that good design is vital in achieving what ever your goals and objectives are for the website, but what if you don’t have access to a great designer or better yet really don’t have the capital to afford one right now? I’d suggest using a pre-designed template; we’ve been using them for quite some time and they’re really a great economic choice for someone on a restricted budget for a couple or reasons. First, you save a few bucks and everyone likes saving some money. Second, you can actually see what your design will look like before the developers even get started; and finally, they’re ready to go so usually you can have your site up and running in no time at all.
If your interested there are several great resources out there for some beautiful templates take a look and let us know if we can get one plugged in for you.
Every morning when you wake up there is a routine that you have become accustomed too. Alarm goes off, you hit the snooze, alarm goes off again, you hit the snooze a little harder this time, then again and harder the alarm clock gets hit till finally you grunt, groan and finally get out of bed and in to the shower..off to work, stop for coffee, wake up some more and then maybe muster up enough energy to start working on your emails or phone calls. ugggggghhhh…. well this may not be your personal routine but its what a lot of people do in one way or another to get their day started. The problem with this is, they don’t really want to get up, and when you arent really happy about doing something, often times it reflects on the rest of our day. So what are some ways that we can change this?
I’s easy to recognize when you’re physically tired. You haven’t slept normally in days or even weeks. You can’t remember the last time you saw the inside of a gym. And enough caffeine is racing through your bloodstream to keep a small elephant alert. Read the rest of this entry »
The quest begins with a simple Google search “professional web design company;” because after all you’ve had the IT guy do your last site and his design skills leave much to be desired. Your search returns several astounding companies, and no surprise at the top of the list you find LevelTen. After a few minutes browsing our award winning portfolio, you take the time to fill out the free price quote and so begins the company website redesign. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, LevelTen held our second installment of the Synergy Online Marketing series: “Blueprints for Online Marketing Success.”Tom McCracken, President of LevelTen, gave a remarkable presentation on the Architecture of Synergy Online Marketing.With the tagline, “It takes more than just a website to have a big, successful online presence,” Tom explained the importance of building your website from the bottom up with all important elements in the right places.
The conversation starts like this. A business owner comes in and says “Can your company help us get our website better search results in the search engines?” And I reply, “WOW, I’ve got great news! You’ve come to the right place. We specialize in SEO.”
Digging deeper we find that the business owner’s wife’s nephew’s friend helped with some changes on their site a few months ago but has now moved on to Jr. College and is no where to be found. Meanwhile, because he’s not around anymore to “optimize” the site, they’ve seemingly fallen off the search engines or are no longer able to pull up for key search terms or even the company name. The business owner says “Can you pickup where he left off and help us get back up for search results?”
My response is, “Did I say we do Search Engine Optimization? We provide Search Emergency Operations. As a matter of fact, I’m leaving right now to help out with the fires in California.” Read the rest of this entry »
