Posts Tagged ‘outlook’

Cool Apps: Take Full Control of Your Inbox

By John Thompson | December 17th, 2010 0 Comments

Cluttered inboxes. Twitter and Facebook feeds. Notebooks full of to-do lists. Houses to show. Clients to meet. Bills to pay. With so much vying for our attention these days, the simple follow-up can sometimes be elusive. And yet it’s the very act that often leads to a sale.

Don’t ever miss that follow-up again! Boomerang is an app that will make you the king of the follow-up. You’ll never be unprepared for a meeting again. You’ll never forget the call back. You’ll never miss a bill. You’ll have a clear inbox and a clear mind. You’ll be so on top of your game, your colleagues will beg for your secrets.

OK, so what is it? It’s a simple plug-in for Gmail or Outlook that allows you to control when you send or receive emails. For instance, say you’ve been courting a client for a few weeks and you get an email from him saying he’s going to be out of town for the next three weeks but would like to get together when he returns. With Boomerang, you can create that follow-up email right now, and then choose to send it on a specific date at a specific time.

Other uses:

  • Remind yourself to pay a bill on a certain date.
  • Forward an email containing meeting materials to yourself and schedule it to arrive a few hours before the meeting so you can go over the documents and be prepared.
  • Take email messages out of your inbox until you actually need them – like travel itineraries on the day of travel.

You can try and try to get to inbox zero – but what are you leaving behind in the process? Are you remembering to follow up on the important messages at the right time? Boomerang is worth trying if you find that your inbox is not getting through to you in the way it needs to. Boomerang is worth trying if you are going crazy from paper “follow-up” lists. Boomerang is worth trying if you find that you can never find the original email when you need it just before your meeting.

To give this free plug-in a try, go to this link for the Firefox/Chrome plug-in for use with Gmail, and this link for the plug-in for Outlook. Get on top of your game!

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Cool Apps: Xobni Puts Organization Back into Email

By John Thompson | August 27th, 2010 0 Comments

Beyond all the cool, new apps that do cool new things, there are some apps that help us transform the bread and butter mundane things that are critical to our everyday business processes.

Take Email. Though obviously not a new and exciting technology, few of us can live without it. The problem is, it’s often inefficient and sucks up a lot of time maintaining it. What if there was an app that helped us organize it and allowed us to mine its rich data as well – the currency of our modern livelihood?

Ask and you shall receive. Xobni turns your inbox inside out – in a good way. The Outlook plug-in simplifies email management and helps you make the most of your email and time spent on it. It’s easier, faster and more intuitive than your standard out-of-the-box inbox.

What does Xobni really do? It enables faster, more accurate search of your inbox, for starters. And it brings together contact information right beside every email message.

Xobni’s best feature is the easy access it grants to information you will use. For instance, say you get an email from someone whose contact info has not been stored in your contacts folder. No need! Just glance over at the side of the email and you’ll see this person’s contact info nicely organized for your use. You’ll also see links to their Facebook and Twitter accounts if they have them.

OK, this feature may be even better: trends reporting. See who sends you the most email, who sends the most email that you delete without reading, who sends the most email that you consistently respond to. Folks, this is real-time intelligence for your email, which, if used right, can cut some serious time suck that clogs up your life.

Best of all? Xobni requires no additional input from the user. You just plug in and poof … you’re off and running. It’s kind of like slapping a CRM tool right into your Outlook. Only now you don’t have to mess with importing contacts and learning a new platform.

Xobni’s basic version is free and it costs $29.95 for the Plus version. The company also recently launched a mobile version for the Blackberry that costs a one-time charge of $9.99.

Don’t hate email, but do make it smarter and work harder for you. You’ll be much happier for it.

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Cool Apps: Total reQall

By John Thompson | May 28th, 2010 2 Comments

For the most part, most of the tech stuff that I look at and test falls under the heading, “Mildly Interesting.” Every so often, though, I stumble across something that absolutely blows me away.

I had that experience a couple of weeks ago.

I have been blown away…by reQall.

Before I get into the ins and outs of what it does, though, let’s chat. Now, I’m sure that there are those of you out there who are hyper-organized, who never have any trouble remembering anything. All of your ducks are in their respective rows and every tiny detail is in its place. Well, most of us are not like that. Most of us have great ideas, but we have them when there are no Post-Its on which to jot them down. We make appointments, but can’t remember them. We know that there was … something … that we were supposed to do, but we can’t quite remember what it was because we haven’t had a quad shot gargantulatte (no whipped cream on that, thanks) with a side of Red Bull.

For those of us who are dealing with that grim reality? reQall is at our beck and/or call.

With applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Outlook, GoogleApps, email, Evernote, SMS, IM, and even an extension for Firefox, reQall is there, wherever and whenever we need it.

What it is is a high-toned, get-your-backside-in-gear memory aid that’s an organizer, a reminder system, and a productivity assistant, all rolled into one. Have an earth-shattering idea while on the road? Call reQall from your mobile phone and your recording is transcribed into text. Suddenly remember an appointment that you forgot? Record it with reQall and it’ll appear in your Outlook or Google calendars.

reQall is smart. If you say, “Meet with Jack Bauer every Tuesday night at 8,” reQall knows that it’s a meeting, and that it’s every Tuesday night at 8. It’ll also record it accordingly in your calendars. If you say, “Remember to buy milk” it’ll record that in your shopping list.

Here’s where it gets scary smart, though: reQall will remind you of things at the precise moment you need to remember them. Let’s say, for example, that you want to buy flowers for your wife on your anniversary. Create a reminder in reQall and when you’re near the flower shop, it’ll remind you to stop. Right then. I know. Crazy, right? But in the best way.

There are a ton of things that you can do with reQall, each of them cooler than the thing that came before it. Sign up for an account today and see just how organized you can become. You’ll have total reQall.

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