Meeting requests in Gmail

A number of people have sworn by Google Calendars as a great way to keep oneself organized. I had two problems in getting onto the bandwagon - I did not have that Android phone yet. And keeping Google calendar synchronized with my work calendar seemed such a chore.

Turns out the second one isn't such a big issue. Gmail gracefully handles meeting requests from MS Outlook and my Exchange servers.

Yes, there is no way of choosing which Calendar the meeting goes to, but hey at least it is now possible to have my work and life overlap again.

Now for that Android phone.

Review: Xobni for Gmail (first look)

Xobni recently announced that they were coming up with a version of their contact management system for Gmail. I promptly signed up; and the invitation came yesterday.

Setting up Xobni

Setting up Xobni was a quick affair. Xobni for Gmail uses a browser extension, and currently extensions are available for both Firefox and Chrome. I installed the beta on Chrome.

After installation, the Xobni shows up as a side bar to the right of your Gmail inbox. The beta comes in just one color - a baby blue palette - which really stands out if you are using a skin in Gmail.

Once you are set up, Xobni connects to your Gmail account and indexes your contacts from your email. For some reason Xobni does not index Gmail contacts today. This does impact the intelligence that Xobni brings to contacts.

Using Xobni for Gmail

Initially Xobni looks like an ugly version of your contacts bar, on the right side of the inbox. The magic begins once you click on an email from a contact. The Xobni bar changes to show you more information about your interaction with that contact.

In a mostly intuitive fashion, Xobni shows you the history of conversations with the contact, recent emails exchanged and other contacts that were part of these conversations.

In the inbox, Xobni displays a "trending contacts". It seems like the trend is a mixture of recent emails and volume, but there is no way to customize that at the moment. The flip side, as expressed by a frustrated user over at Xobni's support, is that you may end up being forced to see the same face you correspond with a lot - even if that is a face you never want to lay your eyes on again.

This is clearly a beta

If you are a regular user of Xobni on Outlook, you know pretty much what to expect from this plugin. But the implementation is clearly a beta at the moment, and not everything works smoothly. I was not able to test the entire "social" aspect of the tool, because Xobni always comes back saying none of my contacts have LinkedIn or Twitter accounts. (cannot test Facebook though).

The contact photos from their Gmail accounts were also not making their way through for me. While this could have something to do with the inability to assign default (or primary) email addresses, it can just as well be an artifact of the tool's beta status.

Xobni, when it came out, was an unbelievably slick addition to Outlook. Compared to the clumsy UI and straitjacketed implementation of the default address-book, Xobni was game changer. But in the search-centric, minimalist, world of Gmail, Xobni is just another way of looking at emails and contacts. Yes, it does more than Gmail contacts, but I am not sure if it adds much to the user interaction model. If and when the social aspect of the tool begins to work, it is worth seeing if that ends up making Xobni a must-have.

Pros:

• Quick and easy installation. Indexing a Gig worth of emails took just a couple of minutes.
• A very useful, contact centric, way of browsing through emails.
• An extremely powerful way of consolidating contacts if used in conjunction with Xobni for Outlook.

Cons:

• Contact pictures, even for the Gmail contacts, are not being displayed.
• Does not connect to Gmail contacts, or use its' meta-data. Weak analytics for duplicate consolidation.
• No way to order addresses within a contact. Or delete or reorder contacts themselves.
• Social does not work (reliably?).

Gmail ID - good email ID

When Google got into the business of providing a free email service, I was first in line to get myself an account and play with it. At that time one had to be invited for a gmail account; and being early meant that I got myself a very good email id - a pretty common first name back home.

What I had not realized at the time, was the flip side to having a common email id - the pseudo-spam.

First, there is the 'mistaken' use of my email by folks for all sorts of account activities. I have updates from two bank accounts sent to my email id. There is one broadband and three mobile companies that see fit to remind me of payments due. And at least one kid can probably never get to any online sites because he keeps using my email id for parental consent (that I promptly decline).

Now I have been diligent about trying to let the bank and telecom companies know that their customer does not 'own' my email id. But if a website wants me to log into the account to unsubscribe, there is little I can do about it.

Then there is the the appropriation of my email ID for online activities. I know at least three match-making companies that believe I still need to be hitched. About four universities are waiting for me to register this fall. Some think I have cars to sell, others think I want to buy property. And then the job sites - I have offers from across globe in fields I did not even knew existed. I try to unsubscribe where I can, mark them as SPAM if possible and for the particularly annoying ones I have to go via the forgot password route to log in, change the contact id to abuse@gmail.com and the password to i-am-an-idiot.

Thirdly there are the forward lists I am on. Just because someone knows someone with my first name, they think they can mail me to keep in touch with them. I get baby photos, 'must-forward' emails, jokes and reminders from one school principal that seems to think I am on her staff.

Finally the unsubscribable sites. Horoscopes, yellow page listings, naughty sites and mass-mailing sites - everywhere one does not want to use their own email id. Guess who's easy to remember email ID comes in handy. Yup, mine!

So there you go, first in line with Google, and I get 80% pseudo-spam that gets through Gmail's capable filters. Who would have imagined having a good email ID would be so much work. Maybe I should just have gone with SJPnvTB0HWwhVVo4JFpn@gmail.com