Having Xobni in Outlook, I’ve noticed it’s starting to fundamentally change the way I view my Outlook contacts. It’s like a dynamic mini-dashboard for your e-mail contact history and metrics.

The easy way to remember Xobni’s name is that it’s an anagram of the word Inbox. After installation, Xobni takes a few minutes to index your Outlook messages. Once this Outlook plug-in is up and running it feels lightweight, without significantly dragging down your Outlook performance.

Here’s an excerpt from a great review article in The NY Times:

Other programs, like Google Desktop, perform that same basic index-and-search function. But Xobni, which its creators call an “intelligent filter,” adds a few more features. When it scours the inbox, it extracts phone numbers it thinks are associated with the sender. So when a user searches for a person, Xobni presents the number in a side panel to Outlook.

The software also interprets the social relationships between people who are sending messages to each other. For example Xobni recognizes that if an executive sends a copy to someone else on each message he or she sends, it might be to an assistant or another colleague. When someone using Xobni searches for that executive in Outlook, the second person is listed as well.

Relevant Links

• Xobni: homepage
• Xobni: download now
• NYTimes.com article: If You Use Outlook E-Mail, Meet Xobni
• Lifehacker.com: Xobni articles

Tags: beta, contacts, download, email, free software, metrics, Microsoft, Outlook, Xobni