Awhile back I had found out about Xobni, a 3rd party Outlook tool which helps you organize, manage and make better use of your email and contacts. The features that Xobni added were very useful and sorely lacking in Outlook.
The challenge I saw with the first version I tried was that it seemed to significantly slow down the processing and open and closing of Outlook.
The new version I’ve been playing with now seems to be going a bit faster and they’ve continued to add new features. They used to only connect with LinkedIn to find out more information about your contacts. Now they also help you find your contacts profiles on Skype and Facebook and company information on Hoovers. Xobni also can integrate with your Yahoo! Mail address as well.
In a nutshell Xobni, which is "Inbox" spelled backwards if you hadn’t figured it out, allows you to quickly search for contacts and see a history and conversational listing of all contact with that person. Combining that information with the other profile information that’s now available from the other systems as mentioned above helps puts you on top of your email Inbox.
The other interesting feature of Xobni is to smash some analytics onto your email and start finding out about your emailing patterns and other details.
Instead of grabbing a bunch of screen shots from my installation, visit the Xobni website’s Learn More section for the different screens that are available. As I said, loads of information with Xobni.