4 ms·
I'm a big fan of Xobni (the company), but a couple of the points in this article bugged me: 1. There's not clear evidence yet that they've landed on the "kill
by dshah 18y ago
I'm a big fan of Xobni (the company), but a couple of the points in this article bugged me:
1. There's not clear evidence yet that they've landed on the "killer app". Yes, it's likely more killer (killerer?) than what they started with, but it's too early too tell. Lots of things seem like the killer app, but few are. They may have a couple of iterations left before they hit the true killer app.
2. One of the the stated reasons for not supporting GMail yet is that "Outlook users are more likely to have business credit cards". Although that's true, my guess is that there are enough users on GMail that also have credit cards for it to be interesting.
On the other hand, the "are you happy" box is cool.
- utnick 18y agoIts also alot easier to write a plugin for outlook ( a desktop program )... than it is to modify the functionality of an existing website that is not yours in a nonbuggy crossplatform way.
- paul 18y agoI bet that you've never written an Outlook plugin :) I'd much rather try to hack Gmail JS, which many people have done, btw (see Remember The Milk for a popular example).
- natrius 18y agoGMail is a moving target and anything that integrates with it is liable to break without notice. Outlook changes once every couple of years and actually has a documented API for integrating with it that is updated when a new version is released (I presume).
- paul 18y agoHaving a documented api doesn't make it easy, just ask Xobni. In practice, making a fast and stable Outlook extension is extremely difficult. Also, Gmail actually does have a number of documented and stable hooks for extensions to use.
- menloparkbum 18y agoIf enough people star the request ticket for a Gmail gData api, perhaps a xobni style widget for gmail will be easier to build in the future. http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=271 http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=271
- kirubakaran 18y agoOkay, I did my part.
- vlad 18y agoDesktop software has the benefit of perceived privacy and being easily scalable, as you pay for a filehost and installations are done on each user's computer. However, the problem with this is that once any user sees a bug, screws up their registry, deletes a file, upgrades or installs a Firewall that starts blocking ports or an Anti-Virus program that's over sensitive or slows your application down, installs a new or different Service Pack, then you will receive questions that you now have to answer and debug that have nothing to do with your program. Then you have to create and release an update, making the customer wait, instead of being able to change things on the fly, as is possible with many web app frameworks.
- yariv 18y agoI really like Xobni too. I use it at work and it does make Outlook much better -- primary because of the better search and threaded conversations (the social networking and analytics features are less useful for me, though). However, I think Xobni's market is largely hypothetical, and it's not clear how Xobni can make money. The fact that I have a credit card doesn't mean I will use it in Xobni, especially because the app is free and it already solves my Outlook problems. (Btw, I would be happy to pay $20 for Xobni if they charged me for it :) )
- skmurphy 18y agoIt's tough to keep your own success in perspective. I agree it's not clear that they have a killer app (yet).