Although I prefer and primarily use Gmail for the majority of my email needs, I do connect it via IMAP to Microsoft Outlook as well. And while there are many options available to extend the functionality of Microsoft Outlook including taglocity and Clear Context, Xobni is the one that I seem to come back to.
I’ve detailed my week with Xobni experience in the past and continue to find Xobni a nice addition to my Outlook experience. Recently they added LinkedIn integration and today they are announcing a whole slew of additional connections.
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A little over a year ago, I made a big mistake. I moved from Gmail to Yahoo Mail.
As a web worker, a large part of my day is spent in my inbox, so it wasn’t a decision I made willy-nilly. When the new version of Yahoo Mail was launched, I gave it a try and was won over by its resemblance to a desktop email client. Drag and drop actions, support for right-click context menus and a well-designed and attractive interface are all features that had me thinking the grass was greener on the Yahoo side.
I was also attracted by the promise of unlimited email storage and support for up to 20MB of attachments with the Yahoo Mail Plus subscription. And little things, like the prompt that appears after you email someone that isn’t in your addressbook that asks if you want to add them, and the ability to organize email into folders. So I made the jump to Yahoo Mail, and I’ve been ruing it ever since.
The biggest issue I have with Yahoo Mail is the poorly-implemented search feature. I’m one of those people that uses their inbox as the main repository of work-related information. Things like article commissions, meeting details and a never-ending stream of press releases are all stored in my email, and rather than tag them or put them into folders (the latter of which I do maybe once a month just to move everything out of my inbox), I rely heavily on the search function to find information that I’m looking for.
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How much do you rely upon services that are out of your control? If you’re like most web workers it’s probably quite a bit. We covered this topic in January, but the recent failures of Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail have resurfaced the call to have backup solutions in place if your online email provider is unavailable for any reason.
For those of us who depend on web based mail such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, or Hotmail; a backup plan is necessary to keep your business running should these services go down. Google makes this process very easy with it’s support of POP and IMAP. If you use IMAP, you constantly have a a backup copy of your emails located on your local drive. For those who are looking for a different solution, check out Lifehacker’s solution, or GmailSync from Nauman Leghari.
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