Go Xobni; The Little E-mail App That Could

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For those of you that read this blog frequently (Hi Mom!), a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a new (and free) e-mail add-on for Outlook that I absolutely love.

It's called Xobni. I've been using it for a few weeks now and have turned on numerous others who are doing the same, who all say they love it.

Xobni tags all the keywords in the mountains of e-mails sitting in your cue and folders and then offers search capability. It sits vertically on the right side of the screen (it's pretty too, lots of colors). You can search by topic, like "fiscal year end", and call up all the e-mails that include that phrase. No more searching through old e-mails trying to remember the obtuse subject lines of important e-mails you now need to retrieve.

But wait there's more...

You can also call up people in your address book and see all the attachments they've sent you (my favorite feature; finding old attachments) or all the e-mails sent and still saved.

This little app, I believe, is the best innovation for the e-mail interface in years.

I've been keeping an eye on Xobni's blog. As a total aside, I wanted to link to their posting on the evolution of their company name and logo.

Every start-up goes through this kind of angst;

- What to name the company?
- Is there a domain available that makes sense in relation to it?
- What should the logo look like? Is it okay to refine it as we go?
- How should we pronounce the company name and what if people tend to pronounce it another way?

The Xobni posting is a good journal of one start-ups process through those early days and how they didn't allow themselves to be locked down into anything immediately. Kudos to them for letting their name, logo, etc. for growing organically.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio