Bill Gates Recommended: Get More from Outlook with Free Plugin Xobni

Do you think Bill Gates is a visionary man? I do.

Bill Gates, speaking February 2008 at the Microsoft Office Developer Conference in San Jose, California, called Xobni "the next generation of social networking." So, what is Xobni? The application, called Xobni (name is strange, but if you spell inbox backwards, you will get what they mean), is an Outlook plug-in that not only indexes your inbox for advanced searching but also turns Outlook into a kind of social networking utility that can identify links between e-mail recipients.

Xobni digs into e-mails in Outlook and creates some kind of database, pulling key pieces of information out of messages in the folders, such as names, phone numbers, and addresses and organizes them into additional sidebar, bringing valuable collective information at your service. For example, click on one of the e-mails and the Xobni sidebar opens an information-rich profile for your contact. You will see conversation statistics (such as how often you communicate with this person and when), phone numbers, other people in the contact’s network (those who have been cc’d on earlier messages), previous and current e-mail threads, appointments, and a list of all attachments that person has sent you.

At the moment, the plug-in is available exclusively for Outlook, but more e-mail platforms’s solutions on its way. From beginning of May, company entered into a Beta stage, when anybody can download and use the utility for free, and no invitation needed.

I personally did it, and I am really excited so far by the extended mail client capabilities. Highly recommended!

More information and link for downloading: http://www.xobni.com/

Video Presentation:

Bill Gates Recommended: Get More from Outlook with

Additional Reading:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/117050
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006890.html

PicLens - New Generation of the Web Photo Viewers

PicLens is a browser plug-in that brings pictures viewing process to the next level of the user’s aesthetic experience. The software was recently updated, covering more Browser types and supported Web Images galleries. In terms of the Browsers list, PicLens works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, and Safari (where it’s a bit limited), creating an amazing moving wall of the images in the reviewed gallery. You can stop, where you need, and increase the particular picture. You can come closer to the picture wall, you can look on it from a far to get more pics on the screen. You can move the wall backward, zoom in to full-screen version, or start a slideshow. In order to start the application, all you need to do is just click on the new "play" icon appearing on every image, when you pass it thorough with your mouse, while yo are on the application supported Web Sites.

The list of the supported sites is already quite impressive, and it growth fast: Photo Sites (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Smugmug), Social Networking Sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster), Image Galleries (Google Images, Yahoo! Images, Ask Images, Live Images, and AOL Images). You can also search for images from inside the program, not leaving your 3-D magnificent view. The Application is free and ads-free as well. May be, that is just temporary, until the user base grow enough to make the ads use business model more valuable.

Home Page: http://www.piclens.com/

Brief Video Presentation is Attached

PicLens 1.6 -- Full-Screen 3D Views for the Web

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Update 04-19-2012:

At the end of 2008, PicLens evolved to got a brand new name: Cooliris. Over the time, the company focus has shifted. Now, Cooliris's core consumer product is LiveShare, a free real-time media sharing application for mobile and web that makes it easy for groups to share privately or publicly.