Small Business

Xobni Adds LinkedIn Integration

By Rick Broida

Updated on: June 26, 2008 / 12:01 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Indispensable Outlook plug-in Xobni just released version 1.4, adding integration with social-networking service LinkedIn. Users will now see a contact's LinkedIn profile data (job title, company, and photo), assuming he/she has any, in their Xobni sidebar. Clicking the accompanying LinkedIn logo takes you to that contact's page on the service.

Also new in Xobni 1.4: keyboard shortcuts. For example, when Outlook has focus, try these:

Focus on the Xobni search box: Ctrl - [~]
Collapse/Expand sidebar: Ctrl - Shift - [~]
Email the person in sidebar: Ctrl - Alt - N (mirrors Outlook's compose email: Ctrl-N)
Go Back in the drilldown/search history: Ctrl - Backspace

Meanwhile, Xobni's new folder-selection option lets you choose which Outlook folder(s) the program should index. The company is also promising better performance with this release.

If you don't want to wait for Xobni 1.4 to get pushed to your machine, or you're not already a Xobni user, you can download it immediately. For anyone in the latter category, I can't recommend this Outlook add-on highly enough. It's free, and it's fantastic.