Somebody asked me today about how to get a Twitter feed emailed to them.  This isn’t technically getting it in email format (although there are ways to do that), but I think it’s a great solution for anybody using Outlook 2007.  In this video I explain how to grab a feed and put it into Outlook, and then some of the things you can do with it including:

• Keep an archive of all tweets
• Search tweets for keywords
• Forward tweets (great for monitoring competition and circulating to your team)
• View original tweet

If you have any questions, tips or tricks, add them in the comments on @ me on Twitter.

I was turned on to Xobni at the Blogworld Expo in Vegas a few weeks back.  I’ve been using it on my laptop and primary desktop computers, and I think that I really am a little more productive with it. That, and I am a freakshow when it comes to data and graphs and Xobni has plenty of both!

This Windows-only Outlook plugin is a free download and installs quickly and easily, no headaches when I went through it. Sorry Entourage users and others, I see that other platforms are in dev right now so hang tight. So what does it do? Read on.

As a window that sits to the right of my Outlook inbox it is…if nothing else…a nice visual break from the business look of Outlook.  It is more than just another pretty face though, it adds quite a bit of useful utility to my work day.  The first thing I noticed was its incredible tie in to LinkedIn.  When I get an email from somebody that used LinkedIn it previews the email with their public profile picture and allows me to link over to their information easily.  I’ve added a few people to my LinkedIn network this way.

It actually summarizes quite a bit of information about a particular person.  When I click on an email in my inbox it shows me that person’s “network” and allows me to click through to each person.  This has been useful a few times as I’ve needed to dig a bit deeper with somebody and was able to look at their associations.

Another beautiful feature, the one I use the most, is a preview of my conversations with a person (recent emails) and my ability to click thru to them and have a preview show up in the Xobni box.  Very handy.  Although it’s easy enough to search through my inbox and folders, this is even easier.  I love this part of it.  But wait…I’m a data geek right?  Where is the firehose of data?  Xobni installs its own submenu in the main menu, a quick click and selection of “Xobni Analytics” brings me to a place of statistics nirvana.

There are a raft of useful headings here, including “Time To Respond”, “Unique Contacts” and “Follow Up Delay”.  A click on “Mail Traffic” shows me a chart of sent and received emails and time of day.  A historical chart of this is quite helpful to me in terms of how I spend my time.  Also, it helps me to get into a new habit I’m trying to develop: not always having my Outlook opened.  I’m trying to check in every hour or so, but not be a slave to the constant preview pane of new messages.  So far this has been working well for me.

I’ve only scatched the surface of uses for Xobni, you ought to download it and try it yourself.  Of course you would be interested to know that the Xobni crew is on Twitter, they just don’t update too much. Drop me a note if you find Xobni to be useful, I would like to hear about other experiences.  I think a lot of people will like this.  Heck, the Wall Street Journal even does!

Google is introducing an interesting new feature to their Gmail…math.

Apparently the working class digerati are notorious enough for sending late night emails while tipsy (especially the Brits) that Google felt it worthy to add some complexity to the process of sending email.  So now (during certain hours…late night and weekends…) you will be required to solve a few moderately complex math problems before the mail will send.

Wow.  I’m not even sure what to say about that.  You can read more info on TechCrunch.