outlook

Xobni makes Outlook better, but where's the business?

Update: Charlie Cooper and I discuss Xobni in today's News.com podcast.

The e-mail helper app Xobni exits its private beta period Monday morning. Compared with the previous version of the app I tried (see "Handy e-mail helper"), Xobni is now faster and more stable, and thus more useful.

A refresher: Xobni integrates into your Outlook installation and shows you more about your e-mails than Outlook can itself. For each person who sends you e-mail, it shows you who else they communicate with a lot (their de facto social networks), and it finds their phone number from … Read more

Delay the messages you send from Microsoft Outlook

Since I started using Gmail as my primary e-mail program a couple of years ago, I haven't missed much about Microsoft Outlook. However, there's one useful Outlook feature that Gmail lacks: the ability to delay sending all of your outgoing messages, or to set individual messages to be transmitted at a particular time in the future.

Have you ever wished you had reconsidered sending that e-mail to your boss, explaining in detail his shortcomings as a manager? Or perhaps you regret complaining to a client about her unprofessional behavior for canceling a meeting at the last minute--before learning … Read more

Salesforce.com + Google Apps (Verdict: Good, but occasionally frustrating)

I started using the Salesforce.com/Gmail integrated product this weekend and was largely happy with the experience. The main thing for my company is getting information into one centralized system. We do so very effectively with our developer sites (wiki-based) but have been using SF.com with only middling success. My theory on the Gmail integration is that it will help to enforce information sharing amongst our staff.

My other theory is that we can eventually get rid of Outlook. If there is any app that people are more addicted to than Outlook, it's Gmail. And now we've suckered them into using it for business. … Read more

New Outlook add-on cuts through the inbox clutter

Keeping your e-mail organized isn't a full-time job; it just seems like it is.

I gave up trying to clear out my Outlook inbox years ago. I rely on the program's search features, which are improved in Outlook 2007, though finding specific messages is still a challenge. That's why I jumped at the chance to try out the beta version of Xobni (pronounced "ZOB-nee"), a new program that sifts your messages automatically and provides insight about your relationship to the sender. It's an invitation-only download for now, so you have to request that a … Read more

FuseCal web-based calendar sync (Alpha release)

FuseCal currently in alpha, lets you add iCal-based calendars (and a few other formats) to a master calendar, then choose whether all those events, just the ones you pick, or events filtered by keyword will be synced to Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar, or another program.

If this works well it will help to usher in a whole new world of calendar management that has to date been a nightmare.

Via: Lifehacker

Service links Gmail and Outlook, bypassing Exchange

If you like Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client software but hate the expense of licensing and running Exchange Server, Cemaphore Systems has a proposition for you: a subscription service that effectively lets people dump Exchange in favor of Google's cloud-computing infrastructure.

The product, called Mailshadow for Google Apps, or MailShadow G, is being made available in a beta test version on Wednesday, according to the company. Cemaphore says the product ultimately will be licensed via a monthly subscription fee.

Cemaphore says the service "instantaneously synchronizes e-mail, calendars, and contacts between Outlook, Exchange, and Gmail." Translation: If you … Read more

Block spam, phishing attempts in Outlook

The battle for your in-box shows no signs of waning.

Despite the efforts of software companies large and small, spammers and phishers continue to find and exploit weaknesses in junk-mail filters at the server and client levels. After years of foil and parry between these two forces, you would think that Microsoft Outlook, the most widely used e-mail program in the world, would be a paragon of in-box defenses.

Then again, this is Microsoft we're talking about, a company not noted for being the paragon of anything more than profitability.

A few years back, Service Pack 2 for Office … Read more

Microsoft fixes a dozen Office flaws in four patches; all are critical

Microsoft today released its March 2008 security bulletin, which includes four bulletins, all deemed critical by Microsoft.

The most serious of these affects Microsoft Excel, which alone has six specific "Common Vulnerablities and Exposures" vulnerabilities noted, one of which has been exploited in the wild. The next most serious affects Microsoft Outlook. In that one, a vulnerability in how the software parses "mailto" URIs could lead to remote code execution. A third bulletin affects how various Microsoft Office apps open maliciously crafted files. The final bulletin concerns how Office interfaces with the Web and includes one … Read more

Sync your Google and Outlook calendars

Update 5:25 p.m. PT with other sync tools.

Online calendars are great but the problem is you tend to have one at work and a separate personal one. Now you can see events in both calendars at once, at least if you are using Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.

Google released Google Calendar Sync on Wednesday, which allows you to sync up those two calendars.

The tool gives you control over which direction you want the synchronization to go as well as how often you want it to happen.

The software was easy to install, and I was … Read more