Simon – I’m sorry we haven’t converted you to the growing Xobni fan club. I suspect in your job as a busy journalist you are just the type of power Outlook user we work every day to serve, so we’d love to have you give Xobni another shot.

The point I was making in my comment you referenced is that Microsoft has to make a product that works for 500M users – this is no small task and they’ve done a fanstastic job growing that user base. They’ve made a great product that works for 80% of the information workers out there. However, that other 20% is where Xobni comes in. And truthfully, it has always been Microsoft’s strategy to rely on partners and 3rd party developers to address the needs of those 20% of users. We’re happy to be working for these 100M Outlook users. We make search blazing fast and smart for people that get 100+ emails per day. Thousands of users are buying Xobni Plus (our premium search product) every week because they’ve never been satisfied with Outlook search. We will always be on the cutting edge of email, adding connections to new tools like LinkedIn and Facebook years ahead and with more attention to user experience than anyone else inside Outlook, the Blackberry, and the next platforms we attack.

While I won’t go into detail here about the differences between the products (there are actually many), I did summarize what Outlook 2010 means for Xobni here on our blog: http://www.xobni.com/blog/2009/11/18/xobni-and-the-outlook-social-connector/

Not sure how long ago you tried Xobni, but I would be happy to chat with you offline about the full feature set. If it were the New Year, I would make it my resolution to turn you into a fan in 2010, but maybe, just maybe, I can nail that before the end of 2009 if you’re willing to give it another try.

I think Xobni is a fantastic product. It is unfotunate the author of this article obviously hasn’t taken time out to go through the full functionality of the utility.

Ateiyev –
I installed and worked with Xobni for about a month before I wrote my original opinion for Issue 173. I think I gave it a fair crack of the whip.

You can read my views here:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/246145/snoozing-at-the-oasis

(The piece about Xobni starts towards the bottom of the first page.)

Outlook 2010 makes accessing related items and attachments even easier than it was in previous versions which again chips away at Xobni’s usefulness.

Simon -
I agree with Matt, Outlook is probably the product with two different types of users: The common user who thinks Outlook features are sufficient.

And there are power-users who proverbial “live” in Outlook. They we be willing to get every support they can to make their work more efficient.

With Lookeen we also built an plugin for Outlook that seems to do a thing Outlook already does by design: Search. But we have gone the “extra mile” to give Outlook users an much more powerful search in many ways. One of many examples: Lookeen allows central indexing. That means users can search in enterprise data as well as in local data – with one single query! Sound simple – but the effects are astonishing:
Less search time for the user, more accurate and reliable results, less CPU requirements for indexing, less traffic on network/Exchange Server! In the real world THAT makes the difference at the end of the day for those kind of people!

Martin Welker
http://www.lookeen.com

P.S.: @Rob- thanks for your feedback

In case you have no SharePoint in your organization/home you may not see any profile pictures, just a generic grey person outline. Xobni does its job good in this case and you can see profile pictures from other sites or if you setup them manually. Another thing which is still good in Xobni is a list of conversations and attachments.

Max,
I agree that we need innovators but I think that some choices that Xobni made in the design of their product, such as using a closed information store and their own indexing engine, were short-sighted and are now going to cause them problems.

With the imminent arrival of Outlook 2010, Xobni’s Unique Selling Point has gone and its downsides (EG an extra indexer slowing your computer down and its inability to share the phone numbers it gathers from emails through to your mobile phone) will appear greater.

Microsoft have published details of the Outlook Social Connector and how to write interfaces to any Social Network and also published full details of the PST storage technology used in Outlook for anyone to use.

Re: “finding threads”: If you mean previous conversation threads you’ve had with a person, Outlook 2010’s People Pane does that seamlessly.

Re: “finding attached files”: Outlook 2010’s People Pane does that too.

As I said, scraping the phone numbers out of people’s signatures is a useful thing to do but Xobni keeps that data to itself. It does not store it in the Outlook contact so it does not sync with your mobile phone!

Outlook 2010’s search facilities are light-years away from what was provided with Outlook 2003 and before. The People Pane builds on this by returning instant search results as you read your email. Have you tried the Outlook 2010 Beta?

As I also said in my original article (link in comment 5 above) I would rather have a proper presence indicator than just knowing when someone has sent me emails in the past. Email is meant to be an asynchronous medium. If I need something dealt with immediately I’ll use IM or phone and a proper presence indicator (as Outlook 2010 provides through its integration with Windows Live Messenger or Office Communicator) is much better as it tells you if someone is away, busy or on the phone so you don’t waste time trying to contact them.

As I have also said, I spent a month working with Xobni before I gave my opinion so I don’t think your accusation that my opinion was “partially thought out” stands up at all.