I have recently commented on Jaiku the microblog/presence site, and Nutris the weight watching service. Another of those “sticky” web sites that tend to be open on my private laptop most of the time is Plaxo the address book.
Plaxo praise their service as “the universal digital assistant; available to you wherever and whenever you need it to keep you organized, on top of your life and in touch with those you care about”. That’s probably a slight exaggeration…
Plaxo is your universal address book, and that it does quite well. (No more “there goes the address book of my life” when a hard disk drive crashes.) It can import and export contacts in a variety of formats, and there are toolbars for keeping your Outlook®, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird address books in sync with the Plaxo servers. Plaxo is at its sleekest between members, when contact information is updated automatically provided such permission exists.
As someone who has had a lot to do with preventing and stopping email abuse, I remember there have been allegations that Plaxo would be guilty of sending junk email. In reality, Plaxo forwards mail to third parties only when a Plaxo user specifically sends such mail. (Servers don’t spam people; people spam people.)
You must send contact information updates or requests only when you know that the recipient will be happy to receive your message. Unsolicited promotional email is extremely bad, regardless of whether it is sent through Plaxo or by using e.g. Hotmail®.
Disclosure: I have no financial Interest in Plaxo. I started with their free service, and then upgraded to the optional (49,95 USD/year) premium product they offer heavy users who want to do extra cool things, such as sync Plaxo with LinkedIn.
Why not take Plaxo for a spin in order to see whether it will work for you as well as it does for me? Also, please post your comments!
External links:
- Plaxo (main page)
- Screenshot of a Plaxo message in Outlook®
- LinkedIn (my page)
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