Since Adam from Plaxo sent me a reply to my earlier comment, I have decided to try out their service. First impressions:
I signed up on the website, which was quick and easy. It requires an email confirmation as you would expect, which is not a problem. I had to rescue the confirmation from my spam folder, as it explictly failed their SPF!
Next, I downloaded the outlook sync client and installed it. Download is small and quick. It fired several warnings on the anti-spyware software I use, but they all look like harmless registry values. I had to resurrect a copy of Outlook Express since the sync client doesn't have an option to integrate with Mozilla Thunderbird. With a bit of fiddling to first get my contacts into OE, I was able to start the sync process. It was fast and accurate, although the status messages were a little odd ('transferring 0K of 0K').
Once I had all my contacts uploaded, I went to the Plaxo website to see how the online service looked. The layout is nice, very clean and friendly. There are a lot of options, and it covers all the basic PIM services such as contacts, calander, notes, etc, similar to the way MS Outlook works.
One thing I thought of: I had my own contact information in the data I synced with plaxo, and it listed it all correctly, and found me as a plaxo user. I would have been nice to have a 'this is me' button to automatically fill in my main details, save me copying them out - this might already be possible but I don't know how.
Unsurprisingly, none of my existing contacts were registered with the plaxo website, so I wasn't able to update any information from others, but I did send an invite to a friend to try it out.
It would be lovely if plaxo would consider setting up a SyncML service. This would give them a really hot feature, ability to auto-sync your data with all sorts of devices, and since it runs over standard http like the website, and there are free servers available, it should be a very low running cost for them.
Overall opinions so far? It's a good service, and does what it says on the tin very competantly. It's not a complete solution yet, but with some extra features, it could turn into a 'killer app' for me. Expect more when I have a chance to try out the integration with MS Outlook at work.
So if you're reading this post Adam, here's my wishlist!
In order of priority:
SyncML support
Mozilla Thunderbird & Sunbird support
Gmail sync
I signed up on the website, which was quick and easy. It requires an email confirmation as you would expect, which is not a problem. I had to rescue the confirmation from my spam folder, as it explictly failed their SPF!
Next, I downloaded the outlook sync client and installed it. Download is small and quick. It fired several warnings on the anti-spyware software I use, but they all look like harmless registry values. I had to resurrect a copy of Outlook Express since the sync client doesn't have an option to integrate with Mozilla Thunderbird. With a bit of fiddling to first get my contacts into OE, I was able to start the sync process. It was fast and accurate, although the status messages were a little odd ('transferring 0K of 0K').
Once I had all my contacts uploaded, I went to the Plaxo website to see how the online service looked. The layout is nice, very clean and friendly. There are a lot of options, and it covers all the basic PIM services such as contacts, calander, notes, etc, similar to the way MS Outlook works.
One thing I thought of: I had my own contact information in the data I synced with plaxo, and it listed it all correctly, and found me as a plaxo user. I would have been nice to have a 'this is me' button to automatically fill in my main details, save me copying them out - this might already be possible but I don't know how.
Unsurprisingly, none of my existing contacts were registered with the plaxo website, so I wasn't able to update any information from others, but I did send an invite to a friend to try it out.
It would be lovely if plaxo would consider setting up a SyncML service. This would give them a really hot feature, ability to auto-sync your data with all sorts of devices, and since it runs over standard http like the website, and there are free servers available, it should be a very low running cost for them.
Overall opinions so far? It's a good service, and does what it says on the tin very competantly. It's not a complete solution yet, but with some extra features, it could turn into a 'killer app' for me. Expect more when I have a chance to try out the integration with MS Outlook at work.
So if you're reading this post Adam, here's my wishlist!
In order of priority:
SyncML support
Mozilla Thunderbird & Sunbird support
Gmail sync
