Outlook E-mail Hack - xobni

OK, technically not an Outlook "hack", but in keeping with this weeks' theme, I needed to use the word "hack".  This post is about a relatively new Outlook add-in called xobni (inbox spelled backwards).  xobni is a neat little (currently) freeware application that helps you manage your Outlook e-mail, attachments, contacts and it even reaches out to your favorite social networks.

As you can see in the picture above, xobni does not take up too much Outlook real-estate.  It sits on the right side of Outlook and is composed of 6 sections.

Note: The text portions of these screen-shots have been blurred to protect the innocent :).

1. The top section is for searching your e-mail.  xobni indexes all of your e-mail and makes for fast searching.  I was quite impressed with how quick xobni performs a search.  I was so impressed, I have opted to not use Microsoft Desktop Search while I evaluate xobni.  So far, so good, I have not missed MS Desktop Search.

2. The second section displays contact information about the sender of the currently selected e-mail.  Name, phone numbers, e-mail address, title, department, and even a picture.  It takes what it finds in the Outlook directory.  If a phone number cannot be found in the Outlook directory, xobni does a real nice job searching e-mails and extracting phone numbers.  Other information can be manually added quickly and easily.  xobni also includes a facility to link to Facebook, Linked-in, Skype or Yahoo Mail to display other information about this person.

3. Section 3 displays some analytics about the e-mail sender.  A neat graph showing when you typically send/receive e-mails from this person, how many e-mails you have incoming and outgoing to this person, and a ranking based on how frequently you communicate with this person.

4. Show's the current senders network.  That is; people that this person includes on the to: or cc: lines of their e-mails.  Not sure I see value in this feature, but I will keep giving it some thought.

5. Conversations.  I find this very useful.  This shows the most recent e-mails between you and the selected sender.  You can scroll through the list and open, reference, or respond to previous e-mail conversations.  Very handy!

6. The last section is a list of the file attachments that have been included in the e-mail conversations between you and the currently selected sender.  Simply click an attachment to open it.

I learned about xobni about a year ago from my buddy Daniel at HackYourDay.  I finally got around to giving it a try and I am sure glad that I did.  I have been using xobni for about 2 weeks now, and I am thinking this is a keeper Outlook hack (add-on). 

If you have experience with xobni leave a comment with your thoughts about it.  Thanks!