A pretty neat tool, for a very relevant consumer need. Caught my eye, am using it now, and am already blogging about it.

I receive on an average 25 emails a day (on a normal day) that goes up to 50 or more; Make that 600 emails a month, and important data, files are bound to get lost in the chaos. I had a tough time finding mails and files I needed (I still do), but now there’s at least a little help.

Xobni. Nice plugin to Outlook. Organizes mail, searches in a jiffy, lists all the files I have shared with my contacts, makes conversations out of my mails. See the demo video below to understand more.

[This useful discovery thanks to Rahul]

Convergence drives me crazy. And one nifty example I have here.

Post photos on Flickr of a concert you found on last.fm, take both information and post it on blog. Now you have a gig you attended, with photos tagged, date noted, tracks, albums and CD covers attached to it. That’s Gig Taggr for you. (This app is not quite there yet, but getting there).

Someone will soon add Google Maps, Youtube, Amazon and Facebook integration to this. So with one click you have added music, location, video, photos, reviews, CDs, reviews, books to this.

Just imagine.

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Wordpress rocks. In extendability (widgets, plugins, that too all free and open source); in design (beautiful free themes, wonderful CMS capabilities, magazine styles, et al); and in ease of use. Just for starters, the plugins I use on my website (which are listed by using another plugin!):

There are 60 plugins used: 35 active plugins and 25 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

  Akismet 2.0.2
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template.

  All in One SEO Pack 1.4.6.13
» Michael Torbert (url)
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.

  Asides widget 1.0
» James Carppe (url)
A widget to display the content of the n most recent posts from the specified category - designed for aside usage.

  Audio player 1.2.3
» Martin Laine (url)
Highly configurable single track mp3 player.

  Category Cloud Widget 1.3
» Lee Kelleher (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to display the categories as a tag cloud.

  del.icio.us widget 1.0
» Automattic, Inc. (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to display del.icio.us links

  Feed Statistics 1.3.1
» Christopher Finke (url)
Compiles statistics about who is reading your blog via an RSS feed and what they’re reading.

  FireStats 1.3.6-stable
» Omry Yadan (url)
Statistics plugin for WordPress.

  flickrRSS 4.0
» Dave Kellam (url)
Allows you to integrate the photos from a flickr rss feed into your site.

  Flickr Thumbnails Widget 1.2
» James Carppe (url)
Displays thumbnails from Flickr based on the user/group/tag you provide.

  Google Reader widget 1.8
» James Wilson (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to show your latest shared stories.

  Google Reader widget 0.1
» Miguel Ibero (url)
Adds a widget with the links to the stories shared or starred or of a certain tag of a google reader

  Gregarious Reaching 2.0
» Ankur Kothari (url)
The ultimate social bookmarking plugin. Need I say more?

  Lightbox JS v2.03.3 Plugin 1.7
» Peppe Argento (url)
Used to overlay images on the current page. Lightbox JS v2.03.2 by Lokesh Dhakar.

  Random Redirect 1.1
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion. You can also specific in the URL `random_post_type` or `random_cat_id`.

  Snap Shots™ Plugin 1.3
» Ajay D’Souza (url)
Add Snap Shots to your blog. Go to Options >> Snap Shots to configure.

  Sociable 2.0
» Peter Harkins (url)
Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. Go to Options -> Sociable for setup.

  Twitter widget 1.5
» Sarah Isaacson (url)
Sidebar widget to display your Twitter timeline. The widget allows you to choose to display your twitter username in front of your updates. You can also choose whether to display the time before or after the twitter post.

  Wordpress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.2
» Keith Dsouza (url)
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to Wordpress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode.

  WordPress Database Backup 2.2
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage → Backup to get started.

  WordPress Related Posts 0.9
» Denis (url)
Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress

  WordPress XML Export 2.0
» Aaron Brazell (url)
This will generate a WordPress XML export for import into other WordPress blogs. Based on code provided in 2.1+ versions of WordPress and originally written by Matt Mullenweg.

  wp-cache 2.1.1
» Ricardo Galli Granada (url)
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”.

  WP-EMail 2.20
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.

  WP-EMail Widget 2.20
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a EMail Widget to display most emailed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-EMail first.

  WP-PageNavi 2.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.00
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP-PostRatings 1.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

  WP-Print 2.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

  WP-Stats 2.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display your WordPress blog statistics. Ranging from general total statistics, some of my plugins statistics and top 10 statistics.

  WP-Stats Widget 2.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a Stats Widget to display stats from WP-Stats Plugin. You will need to activate WP-Stats first.

  WP-Sticky 1.00
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler.

  Yet Another Related Posts Plugin 2.0.4
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold. New and improved, version 2.0!

  Youtube Favorites Plugin/Widget 1.0
» Ozh (url)
Customizable display of your latest Youtube favorite videos. (quick readme & manual)

  YouTube widget 1.1
» James Wilson (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to show a YouTube video.

Most of these are wonderful in functionality and are easily customisable. Do check them out for using in your website. And if you are using anything other than Wordpress to run your blog, it’s time to change, I say. Download the Wordpress engine and host your own; or get a free blog at Wordpress.com.

Click on image to enlarge. Taken from Google trends on the iPhone for India. Lets try to read the story this graph shows.

Until late June, not much was being about the iPhone in India (on Google, I mean). Suddenly, PR kicks in, news channels and TV is flooded with talk about the iPhone, blogs start writing about the steep 31k price tag, Airtel starts its holistic marketing campaigns, and finally it also reflects in search requests, with Google spiking in July and still showing high queries in August. Similar buzz can also be noted when the iPhone 3G was launched world-wide, and India has already started searching for tidbits in early June.

Even more reason why pre-seeding works well in technology, blogs and WOM. Apple would want Engadget, CNet and all other gadget reviewers to go ga-ga, early. And sustain the search volume to reach critical mass in awareness first; then with the actual launch, people are already camping outside the stores, blogs have hyped up the functionalities; Steve Jobs is smiling his way to the bank.

Another interesting observation from the Trends link: Mangalore beats all other cities (even Mumbai and Bangalore) and Gujarat tops the searches for both iPhone and iPhone 3G (Surat and Ahmedabad being the main contributors). Unlikely candidate for the geekiest state, beating Karnataka and AP, don’t you think? Or is it just a reflection of buying propensity?

[Try Google Trends. Pretty darn interesting.]

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Description of one of the blogs I visited “I am neither leftist nor rightist. I am a typist.”

So as the number of us bloggers typing away to glory scales new levels every day, methinks, what is it in this medium that the others lack, and why is the proliferation faster than a man rushing towards the loo on the verge of bladder-burst? (ah… a genuinely bad analogy… pat.. pat.. )

First of all, methinks it is the web. When I say web, it is not just the technology. It is the ease of use, ease of publishing and ease of feedback that makes the loop complete. Blogger for word; the carrot that makes even lazy-tashreefs like me to go blogetty once a many while. Halo-scan, shout boards, counters, profile viewers, template enhancers and a whole bevy of such niceties make life much easier and prettier.

But then me also realizes, it is not just the shift of a thought onto a byte and then onto a character and then onto the virtual… it is the need to shout out to be heard (and to shout out even if no one is hearing in particular) is the prime driver.

And then the veritable metamorphosis… Vlogs (video blogs), Mlogs (mobile blogs) and in a few months we will run out of alphabets to precede the ‘logs’. And then it will no longer be a log – or a record or listing of events and interesting happening. It will become a medium of information exchange and real time modification and updation. The precursor, I might conjecture, is already here. We call it Wiki.

An interesting observation: The internet, the web (i.e the hyperlinked spaced sitting above the net architechture), and now blogs are all indicative and have grown out of the single impressive factor of collaborative sharing of experiences. And the next generation of such collaboration is already nested deep in the ideas we don’t even realize are already a part of our lives. Linux, the quintessential case study on open source, is also one of the best examples of collaborative software. And then there is the big daddy of them all, Google. Their search improves as we visit a page more and more, Orkut grows as we add more friends, Blogger expands as you and me write more, and Google Answers is a site run by everyone who answers a question.

This incredible model made possible only due to the omnipresent connectivity and the hyperspace, and it has happened now. And I feel privileged to be a part of this silent revolution. I am not a baby-boomer loathing technology, nor am I a Gen-Z whiz kid who thinks Google is a given and doesn’t understand why the net is so unbelievable. I am mentally baked just right, with the understanding and the sense of awe in perfect balance. Bless the zeros and ones… and bless the future that drives our present making us goal-seek and fulfill our own Pygmalion prophecies.