Xobni ?

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xpd

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#31668 26-Mar-2009 10:43

Anyone running Xobni for Outlook ?

If so, what do you think of it ? Of use or just a gimmick ?

TIA

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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camo786

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#203449 26-Mar-2009 10:58

I use it

Its quite usefull actually, makes outlook more like gmail with emails grouped conversations, all in a sidebar to the right - you need a widescreen though

I also use this quickfile for outlook to, send and file is just awesome

http://www.addins4outlook.com/

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#203483 26-Mar-2009 12:52

Tried it a few times in the past the threading and search was decent but I had the feeling that it was a bit bloated and heavy on resources for my liking.

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#205045 3-Apr-2009 00:20

scary! not the product/add-in, but the information it returns.....specifically from facebook. colour me paranoid again :p

for example: if i look up someone on facebook I see their name and picture in the list but no other details. with xobni in outlook, i select their email and not only does it show me their facebook name and pic, it also shows me a list of all their photos that have public permissions set on them. The reason i was so surprised by this is that i didnt realise you could access someones public photos unless they sent you a direct link to the photo/album. obviously there is some API which exposes these directly, not sure i like that capability.

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RedJungle

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#205075 3-Apr-2009 09:36

Regs: scary! not the product/add-in, but the information it returns.....specifically from facebook. colour me paranoid again :p

for example: if i look up someone on facebook I see their name and picture in the list but no other details. with xobni in outlook, i select their email and not only does it show me their facebook name and pic, it also shows me a list of all their photos that have public permissions set on them. The reason i was so surprised by this is that i didnt realise you could access someones public photos unless they sent you a direct link to the photo/album. obviously there is some API which exposes these directly, not sure i like that capability.

Public means public. They are exposed via the API, and you'd also likely find them indexed by google, etc.

I tried Xobni when it first came out - thought it was interesting, but didn't find myself using it enough to keep. Might peek again now it's moved on a few revisions.

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#205078 3-Apr-2009 09:48

Well, its been handy for me so far, the search is so much faster but obviously this is due to the indexing it does.
Has some interesting stats about my email habits :)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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#205674 7-Apr-2009 02:58

RedJungle:
Public means public. They are exposed via the API, and you'd also likely find them indexed by google, etc.

not necessarily. just because something is publically viewable doesnt mean that a search on a username should automatically return all photos for that user. and if google is indexing by following links then it shouldnt be able to find any photos for a user that hasnt made their general profile publically accessible. The photos should have unique urls that do not comprise the facebook user id and they really shouldnt be findable unless the user sends a direct link to photo or album. i think i'll pull all my 'public' photos from facebook and use another photo site from now on when i need to share...

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#205679 7-Apr-2009 08:01

Don't get me wrong - I completely understand your concern.. but when something is labelled "public" on any website, to my mind it should fall under the category of "If you don't want it to be found, don't put it on the internet".

With the facebook API it's fairly trivial to write a "mashup" which randomly pulls a selection of images from public albums and displays them on a website/wherever... thus making them index-able for google for example. (You've no doubt seen similar things done with the Flikr API).

If you want to share photo's with particular people only, then I'd look towards services that require authentication or even just a password for the album. Otherwise you're relying on the old "security by obscurity" method.. which is becoming less and less realistic these days.