Improving Outlook is no easy feat given that it's notoriously anti-social when it comes to social networking. The free Outlook plug-in iLook Social and Outlook tries to make Microsoft's ubiquitous e-mail client a bit more sociable by including souped-up searching and filtering, Skype integration, e-mail controls, content and attachment exporting, and Facebook support.
Highlighted in red, the iLook Social and Outlook plug-in gives Outlook users more networking features.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)For a sidebar pane, it's a good list of features with an interface that integrates smoothly into Outlook 2007. Desktop e-mail clients are going to have to adapt to social networking far better than they have to survive, especially if the future of e-mail is Google Wave. Postbox does a decent job of remixing Thunderbird for social networking, but it's still in beta and lacks the calendaring you can get in Thunderbird using the Lightning plug-in. While iLook's features are worthwhile, their execution leaves plenty of room for improvement.
The search and Skype features are the strongest, but could still be better. Boolean searches are not supported, nor are cross-folder queries, and the nature of Outlook requires you to manually create a new search results folder that iLook doesn't address. Basically, that means you've got to figure out where your search results are going to go before you see what they are--it's counter-intuitive.
The Skype support is strong, with decent chat quality, contact list support, and other Skype features. Like any third-party Skype plug-in, though, it requires Skype to be running, and iLook wouldn't load if Skype was running before Outlook loaded. The Facebook support was far less convenient than it should've been to convince users to utilize it in iLook. Attachment exporting worked well, but that was more of an alternate path up the mountain than introducing a whole new geography to Outlook.
Making use of the entire iLook experience, unfortunately, will put you in for a bumpy ride. Although Outlook itself isn't known for its speed, this plug-in definitely slows it down. Switching between its features often causes error messages, and it's hard to tell if or how those errors affect either iLook or Outlook. The features that iLook Social and Outlook provides are smart choices, but the end experience is buggy and needs to be tightened before it can be considered for daily use.
Gmail users can now select multiple attachments and add them simultaneously to an e-mail message. The new system simply opens your operating system's file explorer, and supports selecting of multiple files at once. Best of all, it includes a status bar for each file as it uploads (just like Flickr's Flash uploader does) to let you know how far along each file is. This can be comforting if you're adding a file that's close to Gmail's 20MB attachment limit, since you can see something other than a spinning loading icon. It also warns you if you're over the size limit before the files start moving, which is a nice touch.
One area where desktop e-mail programs still beat Gmail is letting users drag and drop their files, which has been seen to work on other Web storage and upload services using a Java applet.
You can now add multiple files at once, and see how far along each one is with upload status bars.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
There's really nothing worse than sending out an important e-mail with mention of an attachment then forgetting to actually attach the file that goes with it. To that end, a brilliant new Gmail labs feature is an opt-in nagger that will give you a warning pop-up if you try to send without a file and have used the word "attached" somewhere in the message.
It's not a perfect system. For example, if you say, "I've put the files in this e-mail" or "included in this message" it won't warn you. Amit over at Puse 2.0 also noticed that the system managed to flub "here is the attachment" and "Attach a document," so the phrasing is not an exact science. With anything like this there's a careful balance between making the act of sending an e-mail sloppy yet simple versus precise and difficult.
To turn on this new feature you must opt-in through the Gmail labs settings menu.
With the forgotten attachment reminder on you'll get a small alert like this if you try to send off a message that mentions attachments but does not have them.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
If you're a Windows user you know full well the tight integration among Microsoft products that has made the operating system a little less than friendly when it comes to tying in various Web apps. E-mail in particular is one of those actions that will usually pop up Outlook or Outlook Express, forcing you to either install a third-party mail app like Mozilla's Thunderbird or go in and tweak your registry.
If you're a Gmail user, and looking to get that same level of integration in Office documents and elsewhere on your system check out gAttach (download). This simple program will append all your mail extensions, getting them to open up in Gmail instead.
One thing that's nice is that it'll simply tack onto whatever browser you've got open, or simply open your default one if you don't have it running. It'll also suck in multiple files at a time (up to Gmail's 20MB limit of course).
Yahoo mail users can also take advantage of a sister product called yAttach, which will do the same thing, although you can't have both installed at once.
See also: Set Web e-mail as default Firefox e-mail
[via FreewareGenius via Lifehacker]
Once installed you've got an easy way to tweak your mail settings in Windows to open up in Gmail instead of Outlook or other default programs.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Document host Scribd has a new service for people afraid of opening attachments. It's simply an e-mail address (iPaper@Scribd.com) you add as a CC recipient on your e-mails. If there are any documents attached, they'll be uploaded to Scribd and hosted for you. Less than a minute later the service sends a second e-mail with a link to that document or documents on Scribd, all of which have been set to private--regardless of whether you or the people who are getting the e-mail have Scridb accounts.
Last week I sat down with Scribd co-founder Trip Adler to chat about this new service and Scribd in general. The last time I wrote about them it was for the dubious Paper-to-iPaper program, which lets people send off their paper documents to be scanned and hosted. I gave it a try and it actually works as advertised--they even send it back free of charge. The whole process took about three weeks, which Alder says will be shortened as the program progresses.
Scribd founder Trip Alder
(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)WW: What are users uploading the most of?
Alder: We get a lot of academic papers, school work, study notes, things like that. We get a lot of eBooks and presentations for work and legal documents. We get a lot of slideshows of photos.
WW: What's the average size of what people are uploading?
Alder: It ranges. We have a lot of really long documents that go over 1,000 pages, and a lot of really short ones too. The long stuff tends to be more interesting, it gets a lot more traffic too.
WW: Have you thought about spinning off versions for niche sites, like adult content or something document heavy like the Smoking Gun?
Alder: We've thought it, but we're working with educational institutions and big enterprises, and people can find that stuff somewhere else.
WW: Speaking of which, how is the push to get school to use your service?
Alder: There are institutions using it, we haven't been pushing that hard because it takes forever to contact universities. We talked to Harvard for example, where I went to school, and it's so hard to get the entire organization to use a single tool because it's so segmented into different areas. MIT OpenCourseWare is uploading all their documents. They created an account just to test it out--they don't have that much yet. They're going to upload about 100,000 documents. As we get bigger and get more resources we'll definitely try to get out and talk to more universities and get them to upload content.
WW: Do you have any users who are uploading an outrageous amount of stuff?
Alder: Yeah we have some power users. We had one guy who was uploading 40,000 documents or something. We ended up hiring him and now he's our community manager.
WW: What type of content was it?
... Read more
Gone are the days of needing software to open up e-mail attachments. Between Gmail and a handful of online office tools, the reliance on Microsoft Office isn't nearly as much of a stranglehold as it was in the 90s. This morning Zoho is expanding its format-free nature with a new tool called Viewer that will open up 15 different types of common file formats from Microsoft, Open Office, Open Document, and others such as PDFs, CSVs, and HTML files. There's also a form to submit file types you want supported in future updates.
Once uploaded, files show up in a simple viewer that loads quickly. Along the top is a list of options to share the file with others (via a URL), embed it on a blog or Web site, print, export, or--the killer app--edit. Clicking the edit button will shoot the document over to one of Zoho's comparable applications. For instance, if you attempt to edit an Microsoft Word document, it will open up in Zoho Writer. Likewise, if you open up a spreadsheet file, it will open up in Zoho Sheet. I didn't manage to get this functionality to work with PowerPoint documents, but you can still import these files manually into Zoho's presentation application as a workaround.
Zoho Viewer lets you upload files one at a time or in bulk. The only snag is a 5MB limit per file, so if you've got a big PDF floating around, you're out of luck.
Zoho Viewer's functionality is a lot like Scribd, which has been doing quite well. The main thing Scribd has that Zoho's viewer doesn't is a sense of community. The feeling of discovery and exploration is lost without some sort of hub for other people's shared documents. As it stands, this is a great tool for people who don't want to install software to view some of the more "off-brand" file types.
I've embedded below an example of the Zoho Viewer in action, with a PDF of the manual for the iPhone Bluetooth headset.
PreClick announced its photo-messaging service last week at the Demo conference. The free app, called Instant Photo Messenger (or IPM) lets you share photos with others using a simple drag-and-drop interface. On the receiving end, users with the IPM software installed get a taskbar notification letting them know photos have been sent their way. They can then view the shots without leaving the program.
(Credit:
Preclick)
IPM doubles as an e-mail program of sorts, letting you send photo messages to any e-mail address. You also have a contact list, as you would on any other instant-messenging client. Contacts are added automatically after the first time you send them some photos.
IPM also automatically resizes your photos, making it simpler to fit more photos into one message and stay under the 10 MB cap of most Web mail applications. It also lets you view received photos as a slide show. If you use Apple's Mail program, then you're likely used to these features.
PreClick's IPM service is an interesting take on sharing photos. I find it effortless to send shots to friends using regular Web mail, but I can see how some might find it difficult on the receiving end if they're not sure how to view attachments. Another option is to use a photo-sharing service such as Webshots, Flickr, or Yahoo photos and send your friend or relative a URL to that photo set. PreClick's IPM may make it easier to share and view photos, but requiring a Windows-only install on the recipient's side to enjoy some of the cooler features such as slide shows is a big barrier to entry.
- prev
- 1
- next
