Xobni
Xobni’s first product, Xobni Insight, is launched into beta on September 18, 2007, at the TechCrunch 40 conference. Xobni Insight plugs into Microsoft Outlook and offers fast search and people-based navigation of email archives.1
Anyone who depends on email to work, knows how surprisingly bad Outlook is when you get beyond about ten contacts; conversations easily become jumbled, and keeping contacts up to date can be a pain. Xobni’s Outlook plug-in solves these problems with a sidebar that automatically tracks contacts and organizes emails into fully searchable threaded conversations linked back to those people.2
Who knows, this time the price may be right. Bill Gates is one high-profile Xobni beta tester, making it easy for M&A drones to pay up for this company.3
The San Francisco startup’s product helps you organize and navigate your email, primarily through a sidebar that shows you profiles of people you’re corresponding with. Soon, Xobni will give you the same functionality in Yahoo Mail, and also help you consolidate your past correspondence and contacts from both services.4
No this is not about whether Xobni (inbox spelled backwards) works on Macs. It is a response to Mitchell’s positively gushing review of this cool Outlook plug in on his blog today.5
If Microsoft comes a knocking, Xobni should be quick to work with them. If they decide not to, Microsoft can easily spend the capital needed to build what Xobni has and Xobni might be looking at a darker future.6