

Inbox 2.0 isn't coming, it is here. - brezina
http://www.xobni.com/blog/2007/11/14/inbox-20-isnt-coming-it-is-here/
My response to a recent NYT article on Inbox 2.0
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rontr
At the risk of getting downvoted due to a negative-sounding comment, I must
say that I don't find Xobni's plugin so useful (at least to me) by what I've
read about it. I use Outlook at work and Gmail for my personal email, and I
think that the main feature that's missing from Outlook is good search. All
the other features that Xobni provides sound, like, well, features. Just
because my emails my contain implicit information about my "social graph"
(whatever that means), it doesn't mean I care about it in my daily work. All I
want from Outlook is to give me a decent search feature like Gmail and I'll be
happy. It's great that Xobni provides better search than Outlook, but that's
not enough to get me excited about the rest of the product. I certainly don't
see myself using a plugin that "enhances" my Gmail experience -- it's already
quite good as it is. Gmail is my inbox 2.0. It came out a couple of years ago.

~~~
pstuart
I'm forced to use Outlook at work and search is unusable. Google Desktop to
the rescue!

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jgrahamc
The thing about Xobni is that as much as I like it (having been doing
interesting things with email for a very long time) and I think they are right
to focus on Outlook (since it sux0r), I can't help thinking that Xobni is a
_feature_ and not a company.

Perhaps the Xobni guys can talk about what makes them think that it's a stand
alone company? Perhaps the answer is that they don't, perhaps they just hope
Microsoft will buy them.

John.

~~~
jsb
Having met one of Xobni's co-founders recently and hearing more about Xobni's
vision, I can tell you that they are not just planning to be a plug in for
Outlook. Xobni Insight is a plug in for Outlook, but it is just a starting
point for the company. They do want to expand into Yahoo and Gmail clients,
various instant messenger clients and who knows what else to help organize
your personal information. Give them some more time and I'm sure you'll be
seeing more offerings before long.

~~~
brezina
jsb got it right. Our goal is to organize your personal information centered
around relationships and communication. Think of all the places where people
communicate with you (web, IM, social networks); we want to organize that
data.

Present day Xobni is already more than a plugin to Outlook. We keep our own
store of all of Outlook's email data and our UI doesn't use the Outlook plugin
architecture (it is very limited). What does this mean? .... it means you can
point Xobni at any email data store and display it within any application.
However, there are costs to moving to new platforms, so for the time being
Outlook is the place to be - 300 million users and they have credit cards.

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lsb
so xobni's an outlook plugin, right? why not write xobni's frontend in
javascript (that a bookmarklet downloads), so that you can have the xobni
experience in ie/ff when browsing gmail.

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plusbryan
It's actually pretty easy to try out Xobni if all your email is in gmail.
Using gmail's recent IMAP feature add, you can set up Outlook to check your
gmail account, and then try Xobni without having to leave gmail.

While outlook's support for imap is pretty sketchy, at least this is a way for
interested gmailers to kick the tires and see what we're all about.

~~~
tlrobinson
Gmail's support for IMAP is even sketchier. It's terrible.

Perhaps it's because Gmail uses labels rather than folders, it doesn't map
well. Also, when I delete a message from the inbox, it doesn't actually delete
the freakin message, it just removes it from the inbox. Arggggg.

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joshwa
When they have a web-based (or thunderbird-based, at least) client, then
they'll be competitive with the Yahoo and Gmail hypothetical offerings.

~~~
gaborcselle
Most people in corporations are using Outlook, so that's why we're initially
targeting that client. Our product is definitely less hypothetical than any of
the announced offerings out there, though. :-)

~~~
champion
Makes a lot of business sense, but doesn't help poor Gmail users whose
Contacts app falls well short of the bar set by the rest of Gmail. Nice that
it auto-adds contacts, but other than that it feels like a bastard stepchild
feature to date.

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nanijoe
Xobni has been a great productivity tool for me personally, I just wish they
would release a public beta already. My co-workers keep asking me to 'hook
them up', but my hands are tied at this point.

~~~
oditogre
Ditto that - I'd love to give Xobni a spin.

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tarkin2
They're planning on extracting social data from emails when most people use
social networks for that task now?

It seems they're asking that people 1) start using their system instead of
facebook et al 2) change their email address (unless it works as a plugin on
other clients).

If they plan on option two then I think they'll encounter problems: most
people I know only use outlook for work use and the web-based ones are
unlikely to allow this plugin when they could implement something similar
themselves (as gmail already seems to be doing...)

Besides, if they do want to extract social data I'd guess they would need to
structure their site like a social networking site which means it will merely
become another social networking site.

It seems a very good idea, except for privacy concerns, but I wonder where
they'll obtain the users when everyone uses facebook et al for online
socialising.

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richcollins
These days I don't really email much, but I guess email is the easiest place
to start.

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mattmaroon
What grad degree were you working on at the time Matt?

~~~
brezina
MS in Electrical Engineering. I completed all of the coursework, published
part of my thesis research, just never turned in a thesis. I hope to finish
some day.

~~~
ced
Curious: Why?

