“Bew eht iks retaw,” my friends.

That’s a Viking greeting of solidarity, often spoken at a Feast of the Moon, which was always held during a Blue Moon, which is the second full moon of the month.  It’s also “Waterski the Web” backwards.

It’s a crazy way to start a post, but it’s fitting as our topic is Xobni (zob-nee), which is Inbox backwards.

Xobni was first introduced to me by my contact at Fetchback.  What I thought was a word of mouth email turns out to be a cleverly designed invitation system designed by Xobni to help spread the word about the Outlook add-on.  Either way I’m grateful!

It’s a cool idea to flip the name backwards- makes it sound alien and futuristic.  It’s also really hard to spell once you know it’s “inbox.”  You have to put real thought into it! (wah wah complain complain)

Okay so just what does xobni do?

Xobni is an Outlook plugin that helps you search and organize your inbox. It makes a lot of sense when you see it in action, and there are a lot of issues it helps resolve.  Practical solutions are something I never get tired of using!

Have you ever:

• Searched for an attachment from someone?  Even with their own folder, someone who sends you a lot of mail will have accumulated lots of fodder in that folder.
• Exchanged several emails with someone on two different topics and had to dig through the history to find what you’re looking for?
• Wondered if the person you were emailing was a human being? Or maybe forgot they were?

These are a few of the issues that Xobni takes care of.  They isolate all of the attachments from a person as soon as you click on one of their emails, identify multiple email conversation strings and organize it in the sidebar for you, and finally display a photo, visible phone number, and links to popular social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter).

2 million Xombies and Counting!

There are also Premium features (a load of bells and wistles) that you can upgrade into, but the bulk of the fun and power comes for free.

Additionally, there’s an awesome video from founder Adam Smith.  He talks about the lengthy, life encompassing development of Xobni as an Internet Start-up.

Spelling with an ‘x’ but sounds like a ‘z’

I had heard complaints from the founders of Justin.Tv (literally http://www.Justin.Tv) about their regret for picking the .tv extension and that they wish they had the .com.  I wondered if xobni might have the same issue.  On a hunch I went to zobni.com and guess what?  It redirects to xobni. Clever and smart!  That way if people only hear of the add-on from friends, their misspelling won’t spell their doom.

Enough said. If you are using Outlook for email, go get xobni and try it out.  Let me know how it works for you by leaving a comment on this article.

It’s a relatively old problem:

Getting files from one of your computers to another.

Photos and MP3s at your home computer, your frequent flier documents on your work computer, and who knows what else is on your iPhone (I won’t ask.).  From emailing yourself to USB Keys shaped like dolphins, floppy disks to Jazz Disks (ha!), the options are endless, and usually a pain in the butt!

I found this cool service called DropBox that will allow you to share files with yourself. Simple as that.

You can also set up permissions so that special people can have specific access.  Say allowing your Aunt Petunia to see your vacation photos, or your boss, Bill Gates, to see your latest work files.

Best of all, you can have 2GB of storage for free.  That’s the price tag that influenced me to sign up.  I’m testing it out to see what sort of uses I can find for it.  I might not have any immediate needs, but the idea of having it available is comforting and will certainly pay off the next time I want to transfer information from one computer to the next.

They also have an iPhone app.  Will it really be all that necessary to have my work files accessible on my iPhone? Probably not.  Though I’m sure many superstars out there might find a time they need too.  Either way, it’s an excellent touch- and fills out the service, making it *everywhere*.

As our computing power grows, we’ll continue to see virtual storage grow.  I wonder if they’ll ever have computers with *no* storage capabilities beyond operating systems and applications?  If you really think about it, the gaming console Xbox and the online community Xbox Live is essentially along the same lines.  Sounds like a new topic brewing!  Until next time, keep water skiing!

Give Mint.com all of the logins and passwords to your bank accounts across the Internet.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Maybe not as crazy as you think. Mint.com says:

Over 1 million people already use our online money management and budgeting software today, and we’re adding over 3,000 users every day. Mint.com is tracking $175 billion in transactions, $47 billion in assets and has identified more than $300 million in potential savings for its users.

But seriously?  If someone else jumped off a bridge- would you too?  Are over a million people jumping?  The answer is no.  Let me give you the low down on Mint’s security.

Security

There are 3 BIG Reasons why Mint checks out on the security front:

1. You’re Anonymous. “Mint works for you without requiring any personally identifiable information from you. Your Mint account is anonymous; set up requires only an email, password and zip code. Mint doesn’t know your name, address, social security number, account numbers, or PINs.”
2. Bank Level Security. “Mint uses the same levels of physical and encryption security that banks do to protect the data we do store. Our practices are monitored and verified by TRUSTe, VeriSign and Hackersafe, and supported by RSA Security.”
3. Money Can’t Move. “Mint is a “read-only” service. You can organize and analyze your finances, but you can’t move funds between — or out of — your accounts using Mint. And neither can anyone else.”

All of the security listed above and a healthy sense of curiosity led me to become one of the “over 1 million people.”

Here are the strengths and main reasons I use it:

• FREE. Yeah, it’s free.
• BIG PICTURE. It gives an excellent all encompassing look at your entire financial situation from credit cards to bank loans, savings and investments.
• NEWLYWEDS. Joining accounts with someone?  It usually takes a little bit of a transition period to get all of the incomes, bills paid, and budgeting done with one account.  Mint allows you to see where everything is, and what’s being used so you can transition strategically.
• BUDGETING. One strong feature of Mint is it’s budgeting capability.  Based on your past expenses, it can automatically generate your monthly budget.  You can then go in and adjust spend levels to where you’d like them.  It keeps track of your progress, and warns you if you are encroaching on going over budget. It learns too! If you pay $1,208 a month in rent by check, you can tell Mint to automatically label any check for that amount as Rent and it will assign it into the proper places for budgeting!

Tonight, while watching Charlie run around the dog park, another owner (dog dada) mentioned Google Wave.  I shared his enthusiasm and we both expressed our interest in receiving an invitation to it!

An invitation? That’s because Google Wave is not released yet.  It’s still in “Preview” mode.

This makes it great fodder for blogging- mystery, suspense, intrigue, drama, and technology!  But don’t let your guard down:

Google Wave is as much a new tool as it is a new way of thinking about old problems.

Do I have your attention now?  Good!  Confused? Even better!  You won’t be by the time you’re through reading this article.

Let me start by answering the #1 question (Sourced: Google):

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

To sum up an extremely flexible and versatile concept into a few words is somewhat of a challenge.  I’m sure Google spent hours agonizing over their current tag line:

Real Time Communication and Collaboration.

It’s important to keep in mind it’s a platform more than a single program.  What this means to you is that while the immediate uses of Wave are similiar to a combination of email and instant messaging, the long term implications are still widely undeveloped.  The platform has been created to be very open and flexible, so that programmers (they like to be called developers these days) can build all sorts of integrated programs (called Robots and Gadgets) into Wave.

Right now it’s a dynamic way to communicate and share.  It’s real time and has quite a few features (such as voting) that remind me of current collaboration tools like Confluence.

There are two videos I like that discuss Wave further:

• Really cool video by Epipheo.
• Google Wave Announcement (by Google itself)

This is a topic that we’ll be \/\/atching closely to see what it evolves into!

If you want to be on the leading edge,

Google Reader is the tool to get & keep you there.

In 1999 a lot of things happened.  Some predicted the world was going to end and no doubt several rock bands had mega hits that are now just overplayed remnants from our past.  It was also the year that The Matrix came out.

A sci fi movie that really broke the mold on reality, both mentally and with killer special effects.  If you haven’t seen it, then you should pick it up at the local movie rental store (if you can still find one) or just add it to your NetFlix queue.

No seriously, if you haven’t seen it- the rest of this will both 1.) not make sense and 2.) spoil the whole movie.  Go bake some popcorn over the fireplace, watch the movie and report back ASAP.

Warnings aside- one of the main concepts in the movie was the idea of plugging into the Matrix. That life was run by an

The Matrix: Streaming data is our friend.

immense computer program and the result of it was a HUGE amount of streaming data.  You could say it’s similiar to a stock ticker on speed, or an Amp Energy drink.

Only by “plugging in” could one access the data stream and basically know what the heck is going on. Yes heck, darnit!

Some folks got really good at staring at a computer screen and reading the cryptic symbols.  But those guys lived on oatmeal that tasted like Tasty Wheat and got chased by spider looking death robots.

As for me, I elect to plug into the Matrix using Google Reader.  The best part is that you create your own Matrix. We can go branding crazy and call it the Mini Matrix, Me Matrix, or shoot, how about Metrix.  The point is that:

We don’t have to read the daily newspaper and learn about what

someone feels is most important anymore.

You are your own Editor-in-Chief.

Using your Google Account (created by getting a free Gmail account) you already have access to a free Google Reader account.

Go to http://www.google.com/reader/ and log in with the username/password for your Gmail. You’re in!

You’ll see several posts in your new Google Reader account. Read them.

They will highlight key features, such as the ability to simply scroll by an article and Reader (it’s cool to drop the “Google” for this one) will mark it as “read.”  You won’t see it again, freeing up your attention for new fresh articles

everytime you log in.

Welcome to your Matrix. Only there isn’t any information streaming by just yet- you need to add your sources!  Finding awesome blogs and sources of information for your Reader Matrix is definitely worth it’s own post.

But I wouldn’t give you the Keys to the Universe and not let you start taking her for a spin.

I’ll give you the first method for adding content to Reader: Subscribing to RSS feeds. (What’s an RSS Feed?)  If you look at the left margin of this blog, you’ll see an RSS button- if you click it you can subscribe to this blog.  But it’s no longer 1999, so I’ll make it easy for you.  Here’s the button and link to this blog’s RSS feed:

Once you click the orange RSS Feed button, you’ll see plenty of subscription options, including:

Click on that button to add this blog’s feed to your Reader.

On the next screen, Google offers you two choices.  Pick “Google Reader” naturally.

Finally back at your Reader screen, be sure to confirm the subscription and you’re done!

You can repete these steps for any blog, news portal, and website with an RSS feed.  My parting words for you as you begin to explore this tool and build you Matrix- add whatever interests you to your Reader and worry about refining your feeds later.  For now you want to build a mighty personal Matrix.  It can be overwelming, but I will help you focus your reading and pair it down to a mangeable level in later posts.

Go plug in! You’ve truly started to Waterski the Web!

Have you signed up for Twitter? You should.  Twitter is more than a fad and should be in your online Toolkit.

Sharing on Twitter is a different culture, and a change in the way we typically operate on the Internet.  Hiding your tweets (messages) goes against the very purpose of Twitter.

The best way to illustrate this point is to compare Twitter to Facebook.  With recent changes to Facebook’s layout and functionality it’s got a very Twitter-like feel to it.  For this article we’ll put aside Facebook’s strategic moves toward Twitter and focus on how they were both first intended.

Facebook is private. Your photos, your status, and your profile itself is private by default.  The only people that can read what you right in your personal space are those that you have specifically given the privilege to.  Facebook calls this ‘friending’ because you officially confirm someone as a Friend.  You can give varying levels of permission to different levels of friends, but the idea of privacy among your circle of friends keeps it a closed environment.  This naturally serves a great purpose, you can share parts of your life with your parents, old roomate from college, and your friends without having to worry if someone is reading what they shouldn’t.

Twitter is not private. Calling it private/not private seems to put a negative connotation on Twitter.  You could also think of it as open and closed.  Twitter is designed to be open.  While Facebook has other bells and wistles, the concept of Twitter revolves around you tweeting what you’re doing/reading/thinking/learning/etc.  If everyone was private, it wouldn’t work- it’d be the equivalent of Facebook’s status updates.  The difference with Twitter is the idea of Following people you want to- whether you know them personally or not.  From political figures to game changing CEOs, you are able to follow them, learn from them.  Additionally, if you want to follow (keep up with) a celebrity from Hollywood (oh boy!), you’re certainly welcome.

One of the biggest reasons people stop using Twitter is because no one is following them. This could be for a variety of reasons, and I discuss the best way to use Twitter in another post.  But if you’ve set your Privacy on Twitter to block everyone, you’ve basically decided to make Twitter a one way street.  And you’re welcome to do that as long as you keep in mind that it’s one of the reasons people drop off the Twittersphere.

But people can read my thoughts and whatever I type!  Yes they can!  So don’t type anything you wouldn’t say to a room full of people using a microphone!

Twitter is a great tool and for many people an equally great mystery.

I hear about it every day.  You signed up, added someone they suggested, maybe looked for your friends, maybe tweeted once, and then… yeah that’s about it.

There are many varieties but the same bottom line: What’s the point of Twitter?

The point is sharing. Just like Raffi encourages kids to share PB&J sandwhiches, Twitter encourages, facilitates and is nothing but sharing within the confines of 140 characters.

Sharing what? Yes you can share what you’re eating, where you’re eating, but you can also share an important news or blog article you read, a lesson you just learned the hard way, and many other informative messages.

I like to use Twitter with the following composition:

• 50% personal
• 50% professional

Do I count every Tweet and ensure exact ratio? Heck no.  But this setup is present in the back of my mind and helps me best make use of Twitter.

Why personal? Simple.  Because strictly business may work for Stock Tickers, but it’s not really all that much

Charlie on his first day with us!

fun for YOU.  Showing people the person behind the @ name is interesting to those that follow you, and fun to share.  Once I took my new puppy (Charlie) to the dark park at night.  I tweeted a thought I had while standing there in the coolness of the night: “@CaseyChesh – Risk Taking: Visiting a dark park at night.”  The realization that I could be stepping on a poopy land mine at any moment was just too much not to share.  And for those following me, the thought of me tip toeing around that mulch filled play-pen probably painted a disastrously humorous picture.

Why professional? This is important.  Whatever your interest is in, you should tweet about it.  And I mean ‘interest’ in the most broad of ways.  From your career & industry to your passion for model railroads.  I will often tweet blog articles related to the online marketing industry, website analytics, or even scientific breakthroughs.  This gives people that aren’t your immediate buddies or family a reason to follow you.  If you’re looking for a job, an employer will see your Twitter account (if they look, and increasingly they are- i know i am).  If you heed my advice, they will see a well rounded person tweeting both personable and professional information- which is a long winded way of saying two thumbs up for you!

Why both? Could you stick to one, sure.  In my experience, I’ve found that both are needed.  There are several reasons why too!  Unless you’re Wil Wheaton and grew up on the Starship Enterprise, there aren’t going to be too many people who will follow you if you only talk about what you had for dinner and your latest bug bite.  Having the occasional value in your tweets is a great thing!  It could be as simple as passing on a link to a funny video you saw.  In the Twitter world, we call that Re-Tweeting and the shorthand for it is “RT.”

When you have the proper mix in your Twitter usage, people with similar passions will be more inclined to follow you.

You can then follow them back.  This weaves an amazing web of individuals who all have common interests, goals, and more.

It’s also these professional tid-bits that will attract you to following other people.  This

is where the true power of Twitter enters the scene.  Suddenly you’re in your own mini-network and one of the first to hear about important news in your industry or hobby.  For me, I care about what Google is up to.  Not only the polished products, but what is in development.  By following the right kind of people (who have the same type of 50/50 mixture) I will always be “in-the-loop” on Google’s latest experiments.

Do you have a free email address from Google?

If the answer is yes, you’re already suited up to Waterski the Web.

(I’ll post a link here to send you somewhere else once it’s written.)

If the answer is no, then grab your floaties and come with me.

Google Mail, or Gmail as the hippy web hipsters like to call it, is the essential tool toward getting you up on both waterskis.  To really rock the web you’re going to want to sign up for it.  It’s free! Go get ‘em!

What’s that you say?  This is only my second blog post and the first one doesn’t really count?

Well that is true, per se.  (Okay not really a ‘per se’ situation, but it sounded cool.)

Let me give you the fat and skinny on Gmail (jee-mail) and why you should get it:

1. Google Mail is free. $00000.00
2. The email address you end up with: chuckyeager@gmail.com can be as professional looking as you’d like it to be.  May I suggest going with first/last name?  It’s actually quite acceptable on resumes.  Ditch the sexysurfer9018@hotmail.com address.
3. Google Searches are quite effective- and they give you the ability to Google Search your email.  This really comes in handy trying to find an email from Aunt Petunia sent 4 months ago!
4. Chat is built in, yup you can chat with the people you’ve already emailed.
5. It’s web based, meaning you can get it anywhere the Internet is available.
6. Pretty decent SPAM filter.  I can’t recall the last time a Spammy email got through to me.
7. It’s the Keys to the City of the Web!

Wait- what? 

You see the most important aspect of Gmail is that when you signup- that login and password can be used to access to all the other free Google tools.  This is the first wrench you’ll need in building your online Toolkit of Power.

From YouTube to Google Reader, you’ll be able to log in using your Gmail credentials.

It also makes for a great personal email that you keep with you irregardless of where you work or who your Internet Service Provider might be today.  (Wait, did I just sneak in an 8th reason? Consider it a BONUS for reading to here.)

We’re going to be talking a lot about utilizing many of the free Google tools, and Gmail will set you up to access all of them when the time comes.