Installation is simple and takes less than a couple of minutes, and as it’s just a browser plugin it provides a neater solution than MailBrowser, because it doesn’t require you running a separate application for it to work. Once it’s set up, clicking on an email will pull up the sender’s biographical information in Gmail’s right-hand sidebar (where adverts are normally served) and links to their social media accounts; you can also use it to store private notes on each contact.

The service pulls contact information from the Rapleaf database, so the amount of biographical information and links to social media accounts that are returned will depend on how well Rapleaf has managed to tie that contact’s email address to the various social media services. For some of my contacts it works very well, for others it returns little or no info (presumably because some people don’t use their work email address for social media accounts), but I still love the way it adds an extra useful layer of CRM-like functionality to Gmail with no effort on my part.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick notes over on ReadWriteWeb, the service doesn’t need your Gmail password to work — but it does have access to your emails (unlike Xobni and MailBrowser, which are local apps), and, as yet, does not have a privacy policy in place. In the comments thread on Kirkpatrick’s post, Rapportive co-founder Rahul Vohra says the reason there’s no privacy policy yet is that service was only opened up to “show some friends.” The app got picked up by the press and the company was caught off guard by its popularity; Vohra says the company is moving as fast as it can to put a policy in place.

(via The Next Web)

Let us know what you think of Rapportive below.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

Google (GigaOM Pro profile) has a long history of buying companies for their talent, and that appears to be the case here. reMail’s founder and CEO Gabor Cselle will now become a product manager for Gmail. Unfortunately for reMail’s fans, that means that the app is being retired; it’s no longer available in the App Store, and after the end of the March there will be no support for it. Until then, the company is making all of the app’s paid features available to all of its users.

The company stressed in its announcement that it has no private customer data for users to be concerned about the retention of, since email downloads used in the app are transferred directly from the service provider to the customer’s phone.

Will you miss reMail?

I think that Google Buzz feels slow to me because it has an interface that isn’t very mouse-friendly. It is laid out like Twitter’s web site, with one long timeline. But it also incorporates comments to the original posts in that timeline, so if a post gets lots of comments, it takes forever to scroll past it. Buzz does have keyboard shortcuts similar to the ones in Gmail or Google Reader, but using them means that I have to look at, and decide how to dispose of, each post individually. There doesn’t seem to be an “archive all” option similar to the “mark all as read” button in Reader.

Together with a lot of web workers, I depend on being able to skim through information sources quickly. Services like Google Reader are well-optimized for doing this, especially in List mode. (To turn on List mode, from the “All Items” view, click on “Show: List” in the blue bar at the top right of the screen.)

The List views in Gmail and Google Reader make it easy to look at the subjects of posts, and scroll through them quickly. Google Buzz, unfortunately, uses the threaded conversation approach of Google Wave, but without the tools for controlling what appears on the screen that Wave has.

I hope that the limitations of Google Buzz’s interface are just growing pains. Maybe the designers of Buzz didn’t anticipate that some posts would generate hundreds of comments. So let’s hope that they’ll give us the tools to use the service efficiently, or, as one commenter suggests, Google Buzz users might give up on it before it’s a week old.

Do you find using Buzz’s web interface slow and inefficient, too?

Google, too, seems not to need a weather vane to tell it what’s up with its last major new product. Which is why, in my opinion, the search giant introduced Google Buzz yesterday: a Gmail-integrated product which, at least superficially, resembles Wave. Buzz is like Wave, but better, since people are already actually using it.

Top among my laundry list of complaints regarding Google Wave was how it seemed like a walled garden, cut off from other elements of the social web, most notably Gmail itself. Sure, there were a variety of bots and hacks to get those things into Wave, but why make things needlessly complicated, especially with regards to Google’s existing tools? It just seemed designed to sour entry-level and casual users against it.

Google seems to have taken note of that bitterness, and made Buzz with exactly the opposite in mind. It plugs into your existing social networks quickly and easily, but I can already see that people will end up using it instead of, rather than in concert with, sites like Twitter. Avid FriendFeed users like Robert Scoble have quickly thrown their considerable support behind Buzz, possibly because the Google product is fairly reminiscent of that Facebook-acquired networking site.

At a fundamental level, Google Buzz is already much more functional than Wave, if only because it talks to things outside of itself easily and with a minimum of hassle. Plus it lives in your Gmail, which is where a lot of online workers spend much of their day anyway. And unlike Twitter, it supports threaded conversations, and a variety of different methods of interaction and sharing. It’s like Facebook without the annoying apps, or like Twitter with all the good bits of Facebook thrown in.

From a web working perspective, I can already see how it would be better for interviewing, for surveying public opinion, and for conducting meaningful research. As long as people get behind it, it will succeed, and since they already show good signs of doing so, I think this is one horse you can safely bet on.

Do you think Buzz is better than Wave? Do you ever see yourself using it more than Twitter or Facebook in the future?

But when I upgraded from Firefox 3.5.7 to 3.6 the other day, I discovered that a few of the add-ons that weren’t yet compatible were important to me. In fact, they had become such an integral part of my daily workflow that I was significantly slowed down without them. Luckily, almost all of the add-ons were updated within a couple of days so I’m back up to speed now, but I realized how much I missed them when they weren’t available. In this post I’m going to share the add-ons that I find it hard to be without.

Some of us at WWD have ditched Firefox in favor of the faster Chrome, but until these add-ons are also available in Chrome for Mac, I won’t switch. In the meantime, I’m sticking with Firefox, and hoping that 3.6, the newest version, lives up to its claims of increased speed.

Mozilla Prism. This add-on allows me to create a site-specific browser for locations I visit frequently. I’ve used it to create a “Google Reader” application that appears in my dock, can be placed in a separate Space, and operates separately from Firefox. I’m not sure why Mozilla hasn’t updated this yet; I’m using Chrome to view Google Reader for now.

LastPass. This password manager not only keeps track of my passwords, it syncs them between browsers and computers. I imagine most web workers have as many passwords as I do — they’d be impossible to keep track of without a program like LastPass. I also use 1Password for the Mac, and sync its data using Dropbox, figuring that it doesn’t hurt to keep such important data in multiple places.

Xmarks. This handy extension syncs my bookmarks between browsers and computers.

Adblock Plus. I appreciate all of the content that is available on the web, including WebWorkerDaily, thanks to the support of advertisers. But some sites have such obtrusive advertising that they are unusable. Google (which makes most of its money from advertising) is allowing ad blockers in its Chrome browser in the hope that advertisers will make “useful” ads that no one will want to block. Until then, Adblock Plus is a necessity for me.

Gmail Manager. This is the Firefox add-on that I use the most. It’s the best way I know to manage multiple Gmail and Google Apps mail accounts.

I’ll also add two tools that are incredibly helpful to web developers: Firebug and Web Developer. Both help me and my colleagues to test and debug web sites.

…and finally, Cards. Well, OK, I guess I can live without this one, but I’ll have find something else to do while I’m on the phone.

What browser add-ons do you rely on?

Getting started is straightforward: Download and install the plugin (versions available for both Windows and Mac) and give it your Gmail account credentials (which are only stored locally on your machine, as it’s not a web app). It uses IMAP to connect to your Gmail and Google Apps accounts; once connected, it trawls through your emails looking for contacts and attachments. As soon as it’s finished indexing your emails, you’re ready to go.

MailBrowser sits as a sidebar in your browser that you can expand or collapse as needed, and sports two main tabs: “Contacts” and “Files.” By default, it opens on the “Contacts” tab, displaying an alphabetized list. If, like me, your list of contacts is long and unwieldy, the built-in search functionality is useful. Clicking on a contact’s name gives you a more detailed view, with a photo (if available), URLs, a bio and any recent conversations. You can add tags and notes, “star” important contacts and create Google Calendar events for a contact right from the interface.

The “Files” tab displays a list of files you’ve received, with rich previews available, enabling you to skim through them quickly to find the files you need. The search functionality also works well with attachments.

MailBrowser is currently in beta so you may find some gremlins (I had some problems importing mail from one of my older Gmail accounts, for example), but it’s nonetheless a useful plugin that adds better contact management capabilities to the Google mail service. While it doesn’t yet have the power of tools like Xobni and Gist, it’s a great platform to build on, and Webyog’s Rohit Nadhani says that there are plans for many more Xobni-like features in MailBrowser, including social media integration, integration with enterprise apps (like Salesforce) and the ability to sort contacts by importance.

Have you tried MailBrowser? let us know what you think of it, and how it compares to tools like Xobni and Gist, below.

Around this time last year I wrote “5 Applications and Services For Which I Am Thankful,” which was a tribute to the cream of the crop that I had chosen as my daily go-to products. With another year gone, I thought it would be interesting to revisit that list of products (at the time, I picked Gmail, BatchBook, BlogDesk, Toodledo and Google Calendar) to see what may have changed.

Despite the number of products that I test and review, all providing limitless opportunity to switch things around, it seems that very little has changed in my day-to-day web app usage, at least in the key applications that drive my business. Today, all five of these apps would be still be high on my list. Each continues to fulfill a very specific need and despite the growing number of other choices in each category, I would still choose these today.

With that said, there is one notable omission from this list, a product that I’ve come to rely on tremendously over the last few months. I’ve written in detail about Springpad in the past and with each day it becomes an even more integral part of my routine.

The tools that we use to run our businesses and organize our lives are tremendously important, and play a key role in our success.

What apps and services are you thankful for? Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/ / CC BY 2.0

I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support.

With a little planning, you can easily sync your address book with Google. Here are some tips — some of which are also applicable to other synchronization systems, such as the one available for synchronizing data between Google and Thunderbird’s Address Book on a PC.

1. Clean up your contacts. It’s easy to get sloppy about how we enter information, so it’s worth looking through your Address Book to make sure that your data is accurate and well-formatted. Putting first names and middle initials together in the first name field can produce amusing results, as can forgetting to check the “company” box for such entries — I had one card titled “Daily, Web Worker”! I also discovered a bunch of messed-up entries that had apparently been caused by previous experiments with sync software and services. One such service must have been European, because I found lots of entries where the postal code preceded the city, as is standard in France, but which isn’t correct in North America or the UK. Be careful with international phone numbers, too. If you don’t precede country codes with the plus (+) sign, some programs will try to format the numbers in North American format.
2. Back up your data! At the least, use Address Book’s Export function, and save a backup in Address Book Archive format. If you want added safety, use a program like Address Book to CSV Exporter to save your data in CSV format, which can be read by lots of other programs.
3. If possible, don’t try to sync two sources with different data, at least for an initial synchronization. You’ll get best results if you can clean up your data in the Mac Address Book, and completely erase all your contacts in Google. However, if that’s not possible, the charmingly named Conflict Resolver will spring into action during the sync, and give you the choice of which records to keep.

Once you’re ready, enter your account information into Address Book’s Preferences. Go to Accounts, check the “Synchronize with Google” option, click “Configure,” and enter your Gmail or Google Apps email address and password. That’s really all there is to it. I’ve found that you need to be logged out of the Google web interface for the sync to start. You might also need to make a change to your Mac Address Book in order for the sync program to become active, but once it begins, the process is surprisingly fast.

The Mac-to-Google sync system does have limitations. It can sync with one Gmail or Google Apps account at a time, and although it offers sync with Yahoo Mail’s contact lists, I’ve never been able to get Yahoo sync to work. Sync is also available with Apple’s MobileMe service, but I haven’t tried that.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the results, and am happy that I can have immediate access to my contact information in several different places. As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too many backups of this vital data.

How do you keep your contact data synchronized?

Is It Worth It?

I’m generally not in a hurry to rush out and buy the latest and greatest OS. It’s always worth reading the reviews, and following reports of bugs. In this case, it’s been a while since Snow Leopard came out, and there’s already been a .1 maintenance release that seems to have dealt with most of its known issues.

Snow Leopard is, by all accounts, not that heavy on new features, but it’s also relatively inexpensive. Most of its advantages are under the hood, with 64-bit processing and better memory management. But one feature caught my eye: the ability to synchronize the Address Book (including pictures) with Gmail or Google Apps — a feature that’s been around for a while, but which, for some reason, was previously only available to iPhone users.

Can Your Hardware Handle It?

This is an important consideration. Windows, in particular, is notorious for increasing its memory and disk space requirements with every release. And with computer prices falling all the time, it’s often tempting to just buy a new computer with the new OS pre-installed. But I decided that my Mac could work with the upgrade.

Is Your Software Compatible?

Planning for an upgrade made me realize just how much outdated and unnecessary software I had accumulated on my hard drive. Luckily, a couple of sites have compiled lists of what works, and what doesn’t, under Snow Leopard. I looked at several of them; I found this one particularly useful. It even has an application called SnowChecker that can be used to find what programs you have, and display information about their compatibility.

When you discover programs that are listed as incompatible, you can either find an upgrade (sometimes a beta version), switch to an alternative app that is compatible, or decide that you don’t need the functionality it provides.

Do You Have Backups of Everything, In Case Something Goes Wrong?

When preparing for major upgrades, I probably spend more time making sure that all of my data is backed up than I do anything else. Of course, I use the OS’s built-in tools like Time Machine, and I store multiple copies of customer data on an external drive, in the cloud through Dropbox, on my smartphone through Missing Sync, and on my company’s development server (which itself gets backed up). But it never hurts to make manual backups of really irreplaceable data, so — for example — I made backups of my address book in VCF, CSV and Address Book Archive format. You might think that I’m overdoing it, but I felt that the time was definitely worth taking after learning of Sidekick’s data loss and an apparent bug in OS X relating to guest accounts that could cause it to lose data. As Kevin over at jkOnTheRun says: “Services fail…what are you doing about it?”

Do You Have the Time to Plan and Execute the Upgrade?

Of course, doing all of this takes time, which is why I prefer to undertake projects like this after business hours. Even if it means missing a beautiful fall weekend. That way, I don’t have to interact with clients or put out fires, and being offline for a while won’t make a difference. I picked up a couple of good books at my local college bookstore where I bought Snow Leopard, and got to page 50 of Terry Pratchett’s “Nation” while waiting for the installation, so it was time well spent!

So far, I have been extremely pleased with how much faster many of the programs I use run under Snow Leopard, especially those that are available in 64-bit mode. And I’m happy with many of the OS’s new features. So for me, the time spent has definitely been worth it.

Have you upgraded to the latest operating system? How has it worked for you?

For Gmail users with an iPhone who work from home, this is great news. Often, those of us not plugged in to the corporate world miss out on the little niceties like Exchange information syncing. Google Sync, now that it includes Gmail, offers a great free alternative for those of us who’ve left our office working days behind. And it uses Microsoft Exchange technology to do it.

Now you can manage your contacts, calendar and email all from your smartphone, and have that information synced back to the cloud in real time, so that wherever you access it, you’ll be looking at the same thing. I’ve been using MobileMe to do that for about a year now, but since many people already use Gmail, and since Google’s alternative is free, this is much more useful for most people.

If you’d like to set up your iPhone or iPod Touch to work with Google Sync, check out the instructions posted by the official Google Mobile team. Some may prefer to continue using Gmail on IMAP with their device, since it means you can set the schedule by which you’re notified of new mail, instead of having incoming messages dictate to you. Also, keep in mind that the iPhone supports only one Exchange account at a time, so if you have one already for work, you won’t be able to take advantage of Google Sync.

Are you using Google Sync?

Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why.

Access. Putting all my data in the cloud means I need an Internet connection to be able to do my work. This limits the times and places that I can work, and makes it more difficult to develop a plan to keep my business running in case of a utility outage. I can’t complete work offline on my laptop’s battery power and then make a short visit to an Internet connection to upload it.

Backups. Very few cloud services provide for making a local backup of customers’ online data, leaving me to trust the service itself to do it. I prefer the security of having my own data backups.

Data Loss. One particular issue that I’ve experienced with cloud services is with those set to sync with other devices or services. If one of the sync locations experiences data loss, the other locations see the lost items as deleted and delete them from their storage as well. The multiple locations don’t act as a backup, because being synced makes them vulnerable to multiplying data loss that occurs at any one of the sync locations. So I have to keep data in an additional (not synced) location to have a true backup.

Service Stability. When I buy software for my computer, I have it for as long as it is compatible with my machine’s operating system. If the software’s designer goes out of business, I can continue using it. With SaaS cloud services, I am dependent on those services continuing to operate to be able to do my work. If a cloud service closes up shop, which has been known to happen literally overnight with startup companies, I can at the minimum experience work flow disruption and possibly total data loss. Even financially stable companies like Google sometimes discontinue SaaS products, forcing users to look for a replacement, and to find a way to port data between incompatible applications.

Privacy & Security. Last, but definitely not least, putting data in the cloud raises a whole host (pun intended) of security and privacy issues. It is easier to protect data that is held on a single local machine than it is to guard against breaches on a server-based cloud system. Having a public point of log-in raises the risk of security breach via compromised password, and data can also be breached in general server attacks, not even specifically targeted to your data.

Data held on someone else’s servers is also more vulnerable to being accessed legally by subpoena than data held on a local machine (which requires a search warrant to access). A cloud service usually has no reason to invest resources in fighting legal requests for data held on their service.

So for now, I’ll keep my data (or most of it) on the ground.

Do you trust the cloud?

• Tab: Moves the current task to the right (makes the task a sub-task).
• Shift+Tab: Moves the task to the left.
• Ctrl (Win)/Cmd (Mac) + Up/Down: Moves the task up or down the list.
• Shift + Enter: Edits the current task.
• Alt + Enter: Marks a task as complete (will also mark a completed task as incomplete).
• Alt + Shift + Enter: Removes completed task from the list.
• Esc: Closes Tasks.
• Shift + Esc: Switches focus from Tasks to Gmail.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a shortcut for moving tasks between lists, which is something that I would find very useful with my GTD system. Tasks has been getting some nice, incremental improvements recently that make it into a very useful task manager (Calendar integration and last week’s addition of the ability to export task lists via email, for example); better keyboard shortcuts would be the icing on the cake.

Bonus tip: While in Gmail hit G then K, which will open Tasks and switch the focus to it. (This will only work if you have keyboard shortcuts enabled — the option is available on the Settings page.) You can also create a task from the current message using Shift + T.

If you’ve found any hidden keyboard shortcuts in Tasks, let us know in the comments.

To import email from another account into your Gmail account, just go to the “Settings” link that is on the upper right of your Gmail account, and click it.  Once you’ve done that, hit the “Accounts and Import” tab, as seen in the screenshot above. You can import from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, or other webmail or POP3 accounts via a wizard. There’s a “Learn More” link if you get confused. Note that you will need to supply the password for your other account.

I went through the import process for an older Hotmail account I have. I haven’t gotten all the messages imported yet, but Google confirms that this is to be expected: “Copying mail over usually takes a couple days, occasionally up to a week — but eventually it all arrives,” says the post announcing the new features. You can also request to have email sent to the other account forwarded to your Gmail account for 30 days.

This was a long time coming from Google, but it will be convenient to not have to hop between email accounts all the time — especially since one of Gmail’s strengths is its huge storage capacity; that should allow me to cut a couple of accounts that I have altogether.

Hit any snags importing an old account into Gmail? Let us know in the comments.

The iPhone does have Spotlight search already built-in, but Spotlight has a limitation. It can only search what is stored on your phone. For an email account, this means that it can only search a couple hundred messages, not the account’s entire archives. And how often is the email you are searching for one of the most recent two hundred? In my case, the answer is rarely.

reMail works by connecting to your Gmail or other IMAP-enabled email account. It downloads the entire archives of the account onto your phone, making it searchable in the app. reMail suggests leaving your phone on a WiFi connection overnight to download mail the first time. I was impressed it recognized my Google Apps email address as a Gmail account and connected to it without a problem via the app’s Gmail protocol. In my experience, other applications can’t always do that (including Google’s own). reMail currently only supports usage with one email account.

Unlike Spotlight, which only searches headers and titles, an email’s entire content is searchable in reMail. The app also allows for more advanced searches than Spotlight does. For instance, exclusion searches are possible, as well as “OR” searches, and searches limited to terms in only an email’s header or body (header:term, for instance). Auto-complete suggestions are made as you type your search.

Once an email has been located, it can be replied to or forwarded using the app’s email client.

One aspect of reMail is its greatest asset and its greatest weakness at the same time. Because the app downloads the entire archives of an email account onto the iPhone for archiving, searches are faster than using similar tools such as Gmail’s search, especially if you don’t have a 3G connection. Searches can even be done offline, when roaming, or when on an airplane, to reference material.

But at the same time, large email archives take up storage room on an iPhone that the user may wish to devote to other things. My relatively small archive of 6800 messages took up 26.9MB. reMail says that as a rule of thumb to estimate it will use 5MB of storage for every 1000 emails, which is fairly in line with my usage.

Xobni includes advanced email search as part of a suite of features that integrates search of contacts, calendar items and tasks, and integration of social media profiles with contact listings. Could this be the future of reMail on the iPhone? I’d say that’s unlikely, given Spotlight and Apple’s history of rejecting apps that duplicate functionality it already provides.

reMail is a powerful search tool. If you need to frequently search your email archives for reference material and have the storage space to devote to it, reMail might be a time-saving tool for you. But if your archives are massive it may leave you pinched for space on your iPhone.

How often do you search your email archives? Is power search capability worth giving up iPhone storage space?

LifestreamBackup can archive a variety of services, including:

• Flickr
• Twitter
• Delicious
• Zoho
• Google Docs
• Photobucket
• Basecamp
• Gmail

The site says that YouTube and Facebook backups are coming soon, and welcomes suggestions for services to add in the future. You can back up multiple accounts on each service.

As I added my account information to allow LifestreamBackup access to the data I have stored with each service, I noticed something about the process. While the site used Flickr and Google Doc’s authentication systems, to back up any of the other services, I had to provide the app with my user name and password. I know that some of the services supported, such as Twitter, offer authentication options that are not currently used by LifestreamBackup. Personally, I’d feel more comfortable if the site was able to work without requiring me to hand over my passwords, or having to remember to update it whenever I change my passwords.

You can see at a glance when your accounts have been backed up through LifestreamBackup’s history function. When you first sign up, it can take about 24 hours to get all of your data backed up, which can make your history seem a little sparse. However, after longer usage, the ability to sort through backups by service can come in handy. It doesn’t hurt, either, that each backup is labeled with the date of the backup. The service can be set to back up each of your accounts on a daily or weekly basis. If something happens, like a hacked account or problems with a service provider, you can download a copy of your backup at any time. The interface isn’t particularly complex — but it doesn’t need to be. You can tell at a glance how to add new accounts and to download your backups. You can also set your account to send you email updates about your backups, ranging from an option of an email every time a backup is performed to a weekly digest of your backup activity, as well as the option to receive no emails.

The service allows you to back up as much as 20 GB of data, with your choice of a monthly subscription fee of $4.95 or a yearly fee of $29.95. If you need more storage, you can use the LifestreamBackup service to save data to your own Amazon S3 account for $14.95. While using the service with your own S3 account seems fairly straightforward, I’m hopeful that LifestreamBackup will eventually offer a service with more storage — I have 20 GB of data in my email alone.

Do you back up your lifestream data?