June 28, 2007

Plaxo 3.0 is On Fire

For my contact/calendar information I use Microsoft Outlook, synced to my Dell Axim. I'm going to replace my Axim with a Treo, Blackjack or Q as the touch sensitivity of the screen is going south.

Yesterday I was listening (still in the middle of it) to a Podcast.net podcast about the new version of Plaxo - it's on fire and revolutionary in that it can sync your contact information from a WIDE variety of sources. This is something we all need.

On Monday, Plaxo, Inc. introduced Plaxo 3.0, the first online address book and calendar to synchronize between Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Mac OSX, Thunderbird, and mobile phones.

According to the press release The new version makes simple what had until now been impossible: bridging between disparate tools and services with automated, multi-way synchronization - without cables, cradles, or complicated software set-up. Plaxo 3.0, now available for free in seven languages, is currently in beta and accessible to all at http://beta.plaxo.com.

Two other neat features include:

An even smarter address book, with Find-as-You-Type Search, One-Click Directions (via mashup with Yahoo!), and Click-to-Call (via mashup with Jajah)

An innovative new calendar, built by the HipCal team (acquired in May 2006), with Upcoming View, Countdowns, Weather (via mashup with Weather Underground), Photos (via mashup with Flickr), and calendar sharing.

I'm no huge fan of "hip" and "cool" flash in the pan technologies like Twitter, but I am a huge fan of stable and mature technologies that help small businesses use technology as a tool to grow their businesses. Tech that helps you save time, save money and do more with less. Plaxo appears to do just that and more.

I'm tired of wondering where a particular piece of data is. Of course most all of it is on Outlook on my notebook. But I also upload things to Yahoo and other services. Knowing that Plaxo makes it easy to keep everything in sync is a BIG productivity boost.

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