Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Adam Smith was 12 when Microsoft introduced its desktop e-mail program, Outlook. Outlook is now the most popular e-mail tool in the world, used by hundreds of millions of people. And Mr. Smith, now 23, thinks that the program is so poorly suited for most people’s intensive e-mail habits that he has co-founded a company, Xobni, intended to fix it. “Using Outlook today is like taking a Volkswagen Beetle into space,” Mr. Smith said. “People are kind of exerting all these stresses upon it that it wasn’t originally designed to withstand.” Xobni, based in San Francisco, is introducing a new tool on Monday that plugs into Outlook. Mr. Smith’s general complaint — one that is shared by many users of Outlook — is that the more the program is used, the slower it gets and the harder it is to search for e-mail addresses and phone numbers."



I posted about Xobni a while ago, and it seems that they're finally ready for a wide-spread public beta because I received notification today that their software was ready for downloading. This New York Times article has details about the company, and how they were almost purchased by Microsoft, and if you're looking to download the beta, you can do so here. I'm going to install it in a few minutes - let me know what you think of it if you install it.

"Thanks for all the feedback you have sent us about Google Calendar Sync. We're rolling out an update that should make it a lot more useful. Previously, your Google Calendar email address needed to be the organizer or an attendee of your Microsoft Outlook events for the Outlook events to sync to your Google Calendar. Now, when you choose to do a 2-way sync or a 1-way sync from Outlook calendar to Google Calendar, all of your Outlook events will be synced to your Google Calendar. If you haven't been auto-updated to Google Calendar Sync 0.9.3.2 and you don't want to wait for the update, you can download it here."

Google is pushing out an update to correct some bugs in their Calendar Sync. I've been too chicken to try it out yet, I'll let the suckers...err...early adopters iron out any bugs first (hehe!). My main concern is how well recurring appointments sync up between Outlook and Google Calendar. For those of you who've used Calendar Sync, do you have any good or bad feedback to share? Has anyone had their calendar wiped out or other horror stories? Or has it been smooth sailing?