Tim Howell’s Weblog

Microsoft Outlook is much maligned in the technical community, with critics lamenting its occasional lack of robustness and its variable performance.

The undeniable fact is that most information workers use Outlook. The product is installed on 350 million desktops worldwide, and represents a fertile market for third parties who can take advantages of its weaknesses to add value. Where there’s weakness, there’s always opportunity.

In the past few days, there have been a couple of developments that have really added to my Outlook experience:

• Xobni has been made available to a broader beta community. With all the recent discussion about the “social graph,:” Xobni (which is “inbox” spelt backwards) acknowledges that there is a significant amount of this data contained within email: the people you send email to are often those with whom you have a close relationship, more so than many “friends” you may attract in Facebook or elsewhere. Xobni makes it easy to make the most of these relationships, analysing the messages to pull out contact information, email messages and documents relating to an email address/contact. Very nicely done, without a performance hit.
• NewsGator also announced its entire range of RSS readers are free. I used NewsGator’s Outlook reader years ago when there were few options around. For a period I also used FeedDemon, but gave up because it was sometimes less than stable. Now these clients are both free and updated. And, as an aside, this is a fantastic strategic move by NewsGator who can use their client products to drive interest and use of their enterprise RSS offerings.

Lastly, I’d be remiss to not mention the Outlook support we provide at ActionThis. We’ve supported Outlook 2007 since launch, and quietly released our Outlook 2003 client at the end of 2007. If you’re looking for a service to help you get more things done, that works the way you do, then look at our free trial.

The erosion of traditional media continues, with the New York Times reporting that CNet’s financial future is uncertain.

Years ago – and we’re going back to the late nineties here – I used to diligently read CNet’s News.com news service virtually every hour. News.com was comprehensive in its coverage of the tech industry, across all facets, and met my news requirements for the best part of a decade. Not only did they break news first, there was also analysis, lengthy and detailed features, and – most of all – the site was considered authoritative in this area. I relied on News.com to be the first and best resource for giving me the news I needed.

As we all know, over the past few years the media industry has been impacted by online media, with the arrival of multiple online sources, including blogs. With the arrival of these, and the emergence of RSS, my news consumption habits have changed.

Going back to News.com, I’ve very rarely visited this site in recent years: I’ve found it to offer dated information, from fewer writers, and its focus has diverged from the things that I’m interested. I’ve located alternative resources for tech news and information, many of these blogs, whose writers either directly create the content or point me to the stories I need.  Typically, I don’t visit the web sites themselves either – rather, I consume the feeds with Google Reader or the feed reader within Outlook 2007.

As a result, my approach to getting news has changed:

• I use Techmeme to give me the significant stories of the day. News tends to break here early, and important stories rise to the top of the page as more people report and comment on a piece of news. With the velocity and volume of news, Techmeme has replaced News.com in guiding me to where news is breaking.
• I read dozens of blogs – time permitting – including obvious choices such as TechCrunch and the GigaOm Network, New Zealand blogs such as Rod’s and Geekzone, and a more eclectic mix of news, start-up, finance, analyst and technology sites, amongst others. My current interests are in start-ups, marketing and – more broadly – technology and media trends, so my focus is on sites that service these areas; in six months time it could well be different.
• And, so that I don’t ignore the other world events, I continue to glance through Stuff, the New York Times and other traditional publications when time permits.

Media is changing and it will be those sites and services which offer timely, accurate and authoritative information that will survive. In recent years the quality of media here in New Zealand has really diminished, and there are ample opportunities in this area right now.

Where do you get your news from? Tech news or otherwise?