It's been a long time coming, and perhaps a little too late, but you can now track your friends' and colleagues' social networking activity in Outlook 2010. Dubbed the 'Outlook Social Connector' (OSC), the functionality is available right now to all Office 2010 Beta testers.

The list of much-needed features that OSC brings to Outlook is long and juicy. 'Activity Feeds' is the new social media technology, collating the activities of your contacts into your Outlook screen. LinkedIn support is included in the current beta version, but there's no mention of anything like Twitter or Facebook support yet.

There's also neat functionality to show you all of the attachments sent between you and another contact, a communication history that shows you your recent emails with that contact, Next year, there will be added connectivity with Windows Live Messenger! There are numerous mentions of 'extensibility' and an easy-to-use developer kit, however, so I'm sure lots of other add-ons will emerge in due course.

For enterprise users there's even a SharePoint 2010 interface! Actually, does anyone really use Outlook outside the enterprise environment? Do social media 'gurus' use Outlook?

There's a little introductory video after the break, from the Outlook Team Blog!

One of the more frustrating things I found when moving from Windows to a Mac in a business environment was receiving email messages that contained other messages as attachments. This is a fairly common thing for Outlook users to do, and it doesn't usually cause problems because Outlook can happily open those messages. It's not very good email etiquette and you should avoided doing it if possible (forwarding the message makes it possible for the receiver's email program to index and search the contents), but there are times when it makes sense -- such as when forwarding a batch of messages at once.

The problem is that the Mail app that comes with all Macs unfortunately isn't capable of opening Outlook's .msg files. If you use a Mac and regularly receive messages from Outlook users, it's likely you've run into this problem at some point.

45RPM Software created MailRaider to solve just this problem. It's a free app that does one thing, and one thing well: makes .msg files created with Microsoft Outlook viewable on a Mac, including any included attachments. Formatting may be lost, but typically that's not a huge issue.

One interesting aspect of MailRaider is that the developer has pulled out the code that he uses to read the mail messages, and has turned it into a framework he calls MOLE. MOLE is a free framework for developers to use that need to read Microsoft OLE documents on a Mac.

There are other ways to read Outlook messages on a Mac, but MailRaider's price (free) and simplicity are definitely compelling.

[via Lifehacker]

Well, it was bound to happen! During a press call today, the Microsoft Business Unit announced that they are working on a version of Microsoft Outlook for Mac OS X. The news comes in tandem with Microsoft providing further details about the next major release of Office for Mac.

Microsoft's Business Unit says the new application, which will replace Entourage when it is released in 2010, will contain a number of great features that will allow "increased productivity across platforms." Some of the highlights include:

• Built on Cocoa. The application is being constructed from the ground up on Cocoa to make integrating with Mac OS a lot easier.
  
• New Database. A high speed file-based database with support for backing up files with Time Machine and Spotlight searching.
  
• Information Rights Management. Helps prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by people who do not have permission.

Outlook for Mac is being built on top of the features released today in the Entourage Web Services Edition including faster syncing and more support for Exchange servers. (If you're a current Entourage user, you can download the Web Services Edition here.)

With the release of OS X 10.6 right around the corner and promising native support for Exchange servers, it's funny to see Microsoft finally waking up and realizing they have got to do something to stay competitive.

One thing that surprised me about Outlook 2010 (apart from that whole HTML rendering fiasco) was the lack of any social features - like Twitter, for example.

TwInbox began life as OutTwit a couple years back, and it's steadily improved over that time. The current version is a 490kb add-in that works in Outlook 2003, 2007, and even the 2010 Technical Preview (if you hadn't guessed from the screenshot).

The usual Twitter client features are included. Highlight a message and you can retweet,or send a reply or direct message to the sender. URLs can be automatically shortened using TinyURL, and TwInbox can even handle uploading pictures and other file attachments. Searches are also supported, allowing you to receive updates for certain keywords from users you aren't following.

Perhaps best of all, tweets behave just like any email messages once they have arrived. That means, of course, they are fully searchable and you can also utilize Outlook's and use the rules wizard to organize, filter, and prioritize your stream. Want to share a tweet with co-workers? Highlight and forward it as you would with a standard email.

If your company uses Twitter for customer relations and happens to run Outlook as well, TwInbox is a great way to centralize communications.

Apart from all the practical applications there are for TwInbox, it's also a fabulous way to discreetly tweet from your cubicle at work. Not that any of you have neighbors with wandering eyes...

[via Cybernet]

There's a minor uproar happening on Twitter over Microsoft's plans to continue using Word to render HTML email in Outlook 2010. Fixoutlook.org reports that nearly 8,000 people have signed a petition via Twitter to encourage Microsoft to change its mind and support web standards before the new version of Office leaves beta. To back up its claims, the site links to an HTML email message rendered in Outlook 2000, and the same message in Outlook 2010: the new version looks a whole a lot worse.

By sticking with Word's rendering engine, which Microsoft started using to render email in Outlook 2007, Microsoft would also be sticking designers with outdated font tags and tables, instead of the latest CSS hotness. According to The Email Standards Project, Microsoft's reason for doing this is to allow Outlook users to use Word's prepackaged design tools and email templates, and have those render correctly for other Outlook users. Microsoft itself is worried that rendering through a browser could slow performance and lead to inconsistent appearance across different HTML engines.

If you're running Google Apps (Premier or Education editions), but you still use Outlook for email, you're in luck. Google Apps now syncs with Microsoft Outlook, so you can keep right on using it, and get your gmail messages, too. It's not just email that syncs: calendars and contacts do, too.

As you'd expect, syncing works both ways: you can bring your Google Apps data into Outlook, and send your Outlook or Exchange data to Google, and it's apparently only a 2-click process. Google Calendar in Google Apps also now supports the free/busy functionality of Outlook's calendar, so you can schedule meetings with all of your contacts, regardless of whether they're on Google or Outlook. Does this mean more business users are going to be switching to Google Apps?

Google Calendar Sync does a decent job of letting you synchronize Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar - if you only have a single Google Calendar you want to synchronize. But if you keep separate Google Calendars for work, personal appointments, or other activities then Google Calendar Sync is of limited use, since it will only synchronize your primary calendar.

But where there's a will, there's a third party plugin. Remote Calendars is an open source add-on for Outlook 2003 and 2007 that lets you subscribe to any online calendar that uses the iCal format. And that includes Google Calendar.

Installation is a bit tricky. Once you download and unzip Remote Calendars, make sure to open the Prerequisites folder and run both applications (or better yet, read the instructions) before running the Remote Calendars setup utility. You'll know it worked if you're greeted with a configuration screen the next time you run Outlook.

Once Remote Calendars is installed you should see a new toolbar in Outlook that lets you add or remove remote calendars. You can copy and paste the URL found in your Google Calendar settings.

[via gHacks]

Xobni is an Outlook plugin that adds social networking and search features to the email and contact organizer. We first looked at Xobni when the service launched in public beta last year. Today Xobni is dropping the beta tab with the release of Xobni 1.7.

The new version doesn't come with any shiny new features, but it it does have a number of improvements under the hood that let Xobni and Outlook work better together. For instance, Xobni loads faster, loads messages better due to caching, and users can controlho woften and how much of their email is indexed by the plugin. You can also decide whether Xobni will open every time you launch Outlook or if you want it to appear only when you want it.

Xobni continues to be available as af ree download, but the company is working on a premium version that will be available this summer.

Xobni is a plugin for Outlook that adds advanced search and social functions to the email client. When we last looked at Xobni, the service indexed your email messages and created personal profiles for each of your contacts by automatically extracing phone numbers and loking users up on LinkedIn. Now Xobni has rolled out an update that adds integration with Skype, Facebook, Hoovers, and Yahoo! Mail.

Here's how it works. You can search for email using the Xobni sidebar. When you click on a message, Xobni will pull up information about the sender, including information from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Hoovers. If your contact's Skype profile or phone number are available, you can also initiate a call with the click of a button.

In addition to searching your Outlook mail, you can also have Xobni index your Yahoo! Mail, although in order to reply to messages you'll need to login to the Yahoo! Mail web interface.

Soocial is a free web service that provides a central location for all of your contacts' phone numbers, email addresses, and other information. If that's all Soocial provided, it wouldn't be that interesting. But Soocial goes a few steps further and allows you to synchronize your contacts across multiple platforms, including your cellphone, Mac, PC, and Gmail.

Yesterday the company released a utility for Outlook synchronization that supports Windows XP and Vista and Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007. While the Outlook sync plugin is in alpha and Soocial recommends backing up your contacts before running, I didn't experience any problems. In a matter of minutes, all of my contacts were backed up online and accessible through the Soocial web site.

Gmail sync, on the other hand is a bit slower. I've been waiting about an hour for the Gmail synchronization to kick in. If and when it does, Soocial wil fill in the next piece of a synchronization puzzle that I've been struggling with for ages. Using Soocial, you'll be able to keep your Outlook and Google contacts in sync, and using Calgoo or Google Calendar Sync, you'll be able to synchronize your Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. And that means you'll be able to update your information on any computer with a web browser, knowing that the changes will be synched to your primary computer and any mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs that you keep synched with Outlook.

Now would someone please release a tool that synchronizes Outlook tasks with Remember the Milk?

Soocial also plans to release a BlackBerry client soon, and already supports hundreds of cellphones.

[via Decoder and TechCrunch]

Google offers a ton of web-based services that replace desktop applications. There's Google Docs for anyone who doesn't need a full fledged version of Microsoft Office. And there's Gmail and Google Calendar for folks who don't want to be tied to Microsoft Outlook. But there's one thing that Google has yet to offer: a task management application.

Now there's a way to add a task manager to Gmail. It just doesn't come from Google. It comes from online task list company Remember The Milk.

Here's how it works. First thing you have to do is check the box next to "add any gadget by URL" in Gmail labs. Then go to your Gmail settings tab and click on gadgets. Next, you enter the URL for the Remember The Milk gadget.

Once you're done, you just need to login to your Remember The Milk account and you should see a list of upcoming tasks in your Gmail sidebar. If you're new to Remember The Milk, you can create new tasks from Gmail or you can visit the Remember The Milk homepage.

Remember The Milk also has a Firefox addon that lets you schedule and check off tasks from your browser. But the Gmail gadget offers a few major advantages. First, it will work with any web browser that supports Gmail. And second, you don't need to install a utility on every browser you use. Just login to your GMail account and your task list will be available.

[via VentureBeat]

Evolution is an Outlook clone for Linux that serves as an email client, calendar application, and a task and contact manager. DIP Consultants has released a version of Evolution that runs on Windows machines. If you don't want to shell out the cash on the latest version of Outlook, Evolution offers many of the same features, plus a few extras.

It supports a whole slew of online services including Exchange, IMAP, POP, iCal, and Google Calendars. Evolution also features integration with the Pidgin chat client.

Evolution for Windows supports Windows XP and Vista. But I have to say, it's not exactly an Outlook or Thunderbird killer just yet. On my test machine it took an unreasonably long time to launch. And it frequently froze while downloading messages from my Gmail account.

[via Lifehacker]

About six years ago Mitch Kapor, the guy behind Lotus 1-2-3, started a new open source project called Chandler. The goal was simple enough: Create an personal information management tool that would allow users to store, share, and collaborate. It would have things like a calendar, address book, and to do list.

In other words, Chandler is a lot like Microsoft Outlook. But there are a few major differences:

1. Chandler is open source
2. Chandler works with Windows, Mac, and Linux and has a web interface
3. You can sync your Chandler tasks with an online server and share them with others

Overall the interface of the desktop and web clients is pretty, but not necessarily intuitive. For example, there's a nice big text entry box at the top of the application that you would think would be for searching. But it's primary use is for entering new tasks. Type something into that box and a new task is created. If you want to use the text area as a search box, you need to type "/f" before entering your query.
Is Chandler kind of useful? Sure. Is it an Outlook killer? Maybe. Was it worth a six year wait? Maybe not. But now that it's here, Kapor says it's up to the open source community to continue developing the project. And I've learned never to understimate the open source community. If there's a will, there's a way, and this application could be the future of collaborative task management. On the other hand, it's not entirely clear if there's a will at the moment.

What do you think? Is Chandler the wave of the future, or should Kapor have given up on it years ago?

Since the dawn of time Google Calendar, we've been waiting for a free, easy way to fully synchronize our Google Calendar to desktop calendar clients like iCal. We'd love to be able to access the same calendar data across multiple computers, but it's always been a messy affair, not free, an incomplete solution, or PC only.

Well, Calgoo has been one of those paid options up until now, but the minds behind the program just announced that it is free from here on out. That's right, Calgoo is now the free option in Google Calendar and desktop caledar synchronization. Calgoo officially supports 30 Boxes, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, and -- of course -- Google Calendar.

Calgoo's "Chief Owl" will not employ ads in the app in order to pay for the costs of developing the program, but the team will begin to run ads on Calgoo Hub and possibly other future products. As for the software itself, it's pretty easy to use, and it provides for two-way synchonization, which means that any changes on one calendar will apply to the other.

[via WebWorkerDaily]

If you've ever upgraded Outlook, tried to keep your contacts and calendar when migrating to a new computer, or plugged a PDA into your PC, odds are you've got a few duplicate items in Outlook. Outlook Duplicate Items Remover can help you find and remove those duplicates.

ODIR is a free Windows utility that integrates itself with Outlook. Once installed, you should notice a new ODIR menu in Outlook. When you click Remove Duplicate items, you can choose any Outlook folder to scan. ODIR can handle contacts, calendar items, tasks, notes, or emails.

The utility scans contacts to find identical first and last names, email addresses and company names. If you've got two items that are similar, but not identical, ODIR may still try to move one to a new folder. Becuase the program isolates your duplicates instead of deleting them, you can always go into the new folder and move them back.

[via SolSie]