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It was pointed out to me by a reader via email that I haven’t really kept you all in the loop with my Xobni saga… So this brief post will hopefully get you all up to speed and give you some insight of what I am working through and still hope to get resolved.

Unfortunately, I still have Xobni uninstalled.  There are two primary hurdles that still present themselves which I am currently unable to get past on my primary work machine.

First, I periodically use a Satellite connection through a VPN to connect to our corporate email Exchange server.  When I operate in that environment with Xobni installed, my Outlook become unbearably slow.  What is unbearably slow… well let’s just say that I could type a complete sentence pick up the phone, look up a phone number and dial that number and when I look at the screen the sentence will not be visible in its entirety.  (In all fairness to what I consider to be a great application this slowdown does not seem to exist on my high speed (DSL) connection when connected through our VPN.)  Since I spend about 40-50% of my time in that satellite environment I can’t deal with the extreme slowness.

Second, is that I still have the issue of improper shutdown of Outlook.  This causes corruption in my mailstores which take absolutely forever to rebuild when I restart Outlook.  Things that I have tried to do to resolve this problem…

Archive messages - I have nearly 100,000 messages and I have now broken them all into separate mailstores by year to get their file sizes down.

Upgrade to Outlook 2007 - Recently I made a change to Outlook 2007 thinking perhaps there may have been an issue with 2003 an the interaction with other applications.  (I had another selfish reason - I wanted the ClearContext beta and right now it only runs on 2007)

Rebuild the mailstores with ScanPST - I have rebuilt each and every one of the mailstores (archives included) thinking that any errors that would be found and corrected may ultimately resolve the shutdown problem.

Uninstalled other Outlook applications - This would include my most favorite application of all ClearContext.  The problem doesn’t seem to be tied to addons because I had the same result.

In fairness again, you should know that I have a second machine that I use for personal mail and it does not have this Second problem.  I don’t carry this machine up to the lake house so I have no idea if it has the first.

I have been in email contact with the Xobni support department on these issues and have tried multiple things believing that there may be a solution in place.   Support for the most part is quite responsive unfortunately they just can’t seem to figure out how to resolve these two showstopper issues for me.

So the bottom line for me is to periodically install the app and see if I am able to close down Outlook without either a C Runtime error or an Outlook error indicating that things didn’t close properly.  Once I consistently get shutdown happening then I will try it on the Satellite connection.

On a side note, even though I have these two problems I would encourage you to try Xobni if you haven’t.  The search capability is absolutely incredible, and the contact information and management is what Outlook should have done!

They just entered into open (non-invite) beta so the application is available to all.  (Make sure that if you experience either of my two problems that you let their support department know about it!!!)  You can see their press release here or better yet just go to the Xboni website and download it.

You know I am always looking for productivity tips and tricks, particularly in the area of email since I am literally inundated with hundreds of them a day.  In the area of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) - 43 Folders shares their 5 tips.   Elegantly simple yet absolutely right on track…  I can honestly say that I practice all of these and with great success.   My favorite is 1 and 5.  Check less often and if you have no intention of doing anything with the email just file it! - either the circular file (ie. delete) or into a folder.

1. Shut off auto check
2. Pick off easy ones
3. Write less
4. Cheat
5. Be honest

When you are there you might also check out the little Related area just to the right of the article.  You will find a couple of other great nuggets of email productivity information there as well. 

Remember that email should be a tool that enables communication.  What I am finding in this day and age is that while people certainly communicate it is becoming ever more difficult to get things done as you read through the avalanche of email with useless, unnecessary communication. We’ve reached communication overload because it is so easy now.   Stay productive by incorporating a few of these useful tips.

In this day and age of email overload I find that I am having to contribute to the overload because individuals that I have exchange email or telephone calls with have committed to do something that invariably it gets buried in their hundreds if not thousands of email. Ultimately they forget the deadline unless I offer a gentle reminder.

I recently read an article on Itzy Sabo’s - Email Overload blog called Nagless Reminders.  The strategy that he outlines is actually great!  Rather than send a reminder of a committed deadline making you a "nag" simply reply sometime near the deadline with a "Thank You".   The key here is not replying immediately but replying near the deadline.   For example if you receive a commitment on Wednesday from someone to have something done by Monday, don’t thank them on Wednesday… thank them on Monday morning… the commitment just got pushed to the top of their list and you reminded them in a way that wasn’t "nagging".

That of course puts the responsibility on your to send the "nagless reminder".   You could simply create an outlook task to do this… chances are you already have a task in place for the item that needs to be completed anyway.  Something that I do is use ClearContext’s Defer feature.  When the commitment arrives I simply Defer it until I need to offer my nagless reminder.   This takes it out of my Inbox so I am not constantly reminded that I need to remind the person and "magically" it appears again when I told it to.  Productivity to the MAX.   I don’t forget about it and I don’t have to NAG the person I need to Thank for getting me what I need when they said they would.

For those that have been tracking my progress with Xobni I have to say that today is a sad day.  After multiple attempts at trying to figure out if there was a way around my problem - nothing could be found - I really didn’t have much choice but to perform the uninstall. 

In a nutshell, my environment - Outlook 2003 connecting to an Exchange server over a VPN (Virtual Private Network) periodically runs into a situation where when I close Outlook it would technically NOT close.   It disappears from my screen but if I look in the Task Manager the processes are still running.  To make matters worse when I would terminate Outlook (End Task) or do a shutdown, I would end up with a mailstore error that Outlook would want to rebuild the next time I started the program.   Have you ever had to rebuild a mailstore that has about 80,000 messages in it?  Let me just say that it is NOT a quick process.

Xobni tech support (Tyler) was quite helpful and indicated that they were aware of this error and were working to get it resolved.  He suggested that I uninstall until the mid-February time-frame when they expected they may have a fix, and apologized for Xobni’s bad behavior.

It’s a “Sad Day” because I had grown so accustom to the application being available to find people and conversations that I needed.  As I’ve said in previous posts Xobni has become part of my work-a-day world and not having it means that I will need to resurrect my prior searching and contact solution NEO (Nelson Email Organizer).  Neo is a great program in it’s own right, and one that I paid for years ago, it just isn’t integrated into Outlook like Xobni is and is missing some of the functionality that I’ve gotten used to. 

I’ve set an Outlook task for mid February, when I will once again go and download my newest web favorite, productivity enhancing application and hope that they’ve fixed my Outlook 2003 issues.

(Before you comment about upgrading to 2007 - Let me tell you I work for a corporation that has not certified that application for our use.)

I get my fair share of email every day… currently in the 150 - 200 range and that is after they’ve gone through our corporate mail filters so that number does not include spam.   I use Xobni and ClearContext IMS as plugins on my Outlook in order to increase productivity and still I find that I have a difficult time getting my email Inbox to empty every day.  Certainly not for lack of trying but I am just inundated with what I would call poorly thought out, and carelessly constructed email messages.

In just today’s email I ran across the following types of email:

1. 1.  The email storm as I like to call it.  Someone has requested a piece of information from members of the team and rather than the members of the team just sending the information to the one that requested it they hit the REPLY ALL and send their piece of information to everyone that was on the original distribution whether they needed it or not.
2. The attach attack which occurs when again there is a large distribution of individuals and the sender attaches file after file after file to the email.  I had one today that had 9 MB of attachments that were sent to 12 different people and in reality only 3 of those people needed the attachments in the first place.   Wanna know where you disk space is going?  Look at all of those unnecessary attachments.
3. The Carbon copy the world email. This is one of my favorites.  It might also be called the CYA or Cover Your Ass email, or the hidden agenda email.  You find it most commonly in situations where there are issues or problems or things aren’t going the way the sender wants them to go so they try to get the buy-in or approval from anyone and everyone that they can think of.   The one I had today was addressed to me and had 11 carbon copies… and by the way it ultimately created an email storm.  Totally unnecessary and usually it doesn’t produce the results the sender had hoped for.
4. The Indecisively addressed email. It should be a general rule everywhere that if a message is addressed TO someone that this is the person expected to reply.  If you are a CC (Carbon Copy) the message is for your information only and if you feel you need to reply you should reply to the people in the TO and the person that sent it to you… (Don’t create an email storm)  Don’t send me an email with me as the CC and expect me to have any action items or tasks to do in that email.  When I’m the CC it gets much less attention.  Figure out who you are addressing and make the message TO them.
5. The storyteller… Email should NOT be your foray into novel writing.   Get to the point and make it early!  Don’t make me wade through paragraphs of history or dissertation to get to the final paragraph of what it is that you want.   Chances are if it is more than a couple hundred words it isn’t getting read!
6. The conversation stealer is another favorite of mine.  In this email you will have a subject line that is relevant to the message and a reply comes back but there is now an added subject or content in the body that is not related to the original thread at all.  It’s almost as if they feel as if they have your attention so now they need to unload all of the other things.   My typical response to these pieces of email are “Thanks for the reply and the information I needed about XYZ.  Regarding the others… please address them in a different email thread.”
7. The marketing mess.  In my email environment about 80% of my email is exchanged with INTERNAL employees.  The other 20% is with external contacts.  Marketing in their infinite wisdom seems to feel as if we need to let EVERYONE including all of our internal employees, who already know,  about the latest and greatest widget or upcoming conference.  Let’s all put tag lines and hyperlinks and images into our email signatures.  Talk about a waste of bandwidth.   Xobni or ClearContext if you are reading this maybe you can develop a way for us to remove things like “q1marketingimagesig.gif” from our mailstores.
8. The pick up the phone and call email.  These are the ones where you can see they are getting volleyed back and forth back and forth and the medium just isn’t helping the matter.  Pick up the phone or walk across the hall and discuss it.   If you’ve had to clarify yourself in email more than a couple of times you better do something different… the email method is NOT working.

And those were just in today’s email.  The sad thing is I am seeing the same ones day after day after day.  Perhaps we need to be licensed to use email and the Internet.  You pass a course and a test and you are a certified email and Internet user.  You can put letters after your name and everything.   Come on people let’s start thinking before we press the send button!!!

I posted about my initial Xobni impressions a number of weeks ago.  Recall that Xobni (zob-nee), inboX spelled backward, is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that provides you with nearly instantaneous access to “the most important information in your email”. This message is a follow-up to that message and provides more insight on my continued use.

I think it is important as I continue this post that I point out that Xobni is still beta software.  As such a problem or two is to be expected… after all you aren’t a “beta tester” for nothing.  You are helping to identify the “bugs” to make a better product when it is finally released.

Overall, great experience with the tool!  The capability offered in the Search engine is absolutely amazing to me.  I am used to the Outlook 2003 searches where you put something into the search dialog tell it to find it and then come back after lunch and hope that it is finished finding what you are looking for.   With Xobni the second you start typing in the search bar results are being found,  and not just results in email, but results in your contacts and even on the web.  I am amazed at how quickly this search operates and it is every bit as good as the search that I have in NEO and I don’t have to load a new program in order to take advantage of it.  

I have been playing around with multi-level searching and so far my results have not been as promising.   An example of this might be that I know I received a message from John Doe.   I search for John… and then from the contact results I click on John Doe.  Xobni is now showing my all of my email conversations with John Doe and the files we exchanged as well as John Doe’s phone number.   What I would like to do is to then use the search box again but ONLY display results from my John Doe match.   I do not see this as an advertised feature anywhere but the way Xobni builds the windows it is just something I would have expected it to be doing.

Xobni has two features directly below the phone number.   One of them is to Email the person the other is to schedule time with the person.  On my version of Outlook both of these do the same thing.  I get a new email window popping up inside of Outlook and the contact information for the person is displayed.   The only difference between the two is the subject line.  I would think that since we are integrated to Outlook that if you wanted to schedule time with someone that it would open up an Appointment window rather than an email window.  I’ve left support an email related to this behavior.

When I first started using Xobni I kept forgetting about the Organize Tab.  Rather than having to shift over to the Task page in Outlook or the Calendar Page in Outlook you can just click on the Organize tab and on one screen you can see both of those pieces of information.  What I don’t particularly care for on this display is that you see all tasks and they are alphabetically sorted.   Most people I know do not manage tasks alphabetically.  I’m a due date kinda guy.  I haven’t been able to figure out how to get them into due date order and I have a few hundred of them.  Great however if you are looking for tasks for a specific person or customer because searching works here too.

I’ve run across a few other small annoyances but none of them are severe enough to make me want to uninstall the application.  I did that over the weekend and found that I missed the phone number, conversation and searching capability so much I had to re-install it.   I’m thinking they truly have a winner here and will probably have to pry it from my dead fingers now that I have grown accustom to using it.   You can check them out at their website…

When using Excel I find that I will often times want to setup a worksheet that I can use as a template.  For example I might have some monthly sales or inventory tracking that I do and I want to use the same format each month,  but I want each month to be on a separate worksheet all within the same workbook.   I usually do this by creating the worksheet the way that I want it and then I just right click on the worksheet tab and change the name to something like ”SalesTemplate” or “InventoryTemplate” or ”PayrollTemplate”, whatever the data is.

Now when I need to start a new period of time or a new project I simply Add the worksheet(s) to my Excel workbook, go to the template worksheet, copy the entire thing and then paste the copy into the worksheet that I just added…. Very simple process. 

If you do this periodically and just with one worksheet it isn’t too bad to do it manually but if you find yourself needing to copy more than one and you are doing it regularly here is the snippet of a script that might give you some ideas of how you may automate this process.   This script is attached to a button called “Add Project” in my workbook and what it does is:

1. Prompts me for the next Sheet number to assign
2. Does a little bit of error checking
3. Copies my “Sheet Template” to a new worksheet and places it BEFORE Sheet99 in my Workbook
4. Changes the name of the worksheet to “Sheet##” using the number I entered above for ##
5. Places the number I entered in step 1 into the C6 cell
6. And then it protects the worksheet.
7. It then repeats the process using my “Info Template.

Sub NewWorksheets()
  Dim ans As String
  ans = InputBox(”What is the next sheet #?”, “New Sheet Number”, “”)

If ans = “” Then Exit Sub
  On Error Resume Next
  If Worksheets(”Sheet” & ans) Is Nothing Then
  ActiveSheet.Name = “Selector”
  ActiveSheet.Range(”D36″).Value = ans
  Sheets(”Sheet Template”).Copy Before:=Sheets(”Sheet99″)
  ActiveSheet.Name = “Sheet” & ans
  ActiveSheet.Range(”C6″).Value = ans
  ActiveSheet.Protect
  Sheets(”Info Template”).Copy Before:=Sheets(”Sheet99″)
  ActiveSheet.Name = “Info” & ans
  ActiveSheet.Range(”I3″).Value = ans
  ActiveSheet.Protect
 Else
  MsgBox “A sheet with that name already exists. Sheet not added.”
  Exit Sub
 End If
  On Error GoTo 0
End Sub

A very quick and painless process and I know that it is correct every time and that I have the values placed into the fields that I need them in.  Since I use this to keep track of individual project information I could be adding projects at any time and this script really streamlined the process for me.  You can also learn how to use HYPERLINKING to navigate through a workbook like this on my other post located HERE.

I’ve been hosting my own websites for a number of years and I’ve tried a good many webhosts including 1and1.com, westhost.com and hostgator.com and I can honestly say that of all of them that I’ve tried, the best (based on my needs) for the price has been from flexihostings.net. [RETRACTION HERE - I NO LONGER RECOMMEND THEM!] I’m sure your mileage will vary and you probably have raving reviews (or perhaps horror stories) about your host as well.

Keep in mind that your requirements will vary based entirely on how you intend to use your webspace.   If you want it to simply host auction images then you would probably care less whether you could Add-On domains or access a mySQL database.  Your concern would be with ftp access and space…lots of space.  To run my blog I need to have mySQL, I need FTP, I want the ability to add domains, and unlimited email would be nice, etc..  Defining what you want to do and what is needed is really the first step in making your determination about the host you should choose.

Listed below are some of the reasons and features that I have chosen Flexihostings for what is going on something like 5 years now:

1. Customer Support - I’m not one that needs immediate gratification but if my site is down I need quick response.  At Flexihostings all support is email based.  They do however have an emergency pager option that somehow must get escalated to a different group.  When I have used that option for an inaccessible website things were corrected relatively quickly.   I don’t need a lot of hand holding when it comes to setting up databases and scripts so email support was good enough for me and since they are responsive and resolve my problems quickly I can’t complain.
2. Bandwidth - This is the amount of data that you expect to exchange.  It is usually includes not only what people view or take, (download) but also what you publish.  The more the better.   If unlimited is an option you should also probably get a clear definition of what unlimited means.  At Flexihostings I get 2000GB per month.   They happen to define it as premium.  I’m not sure what that means but let’s look at #3 for perhaps a definition.
3. Relative Speed and Response Times - What does that mean?   Well in the case of shared web host space you and any number of other customers are sharing the same server.  Depending on how much memory, processors, etc. are installed on those machines as it relates to the customers and the customer activity you could experience slow downs.   If customer XYZ is utilizing all of the resources then you will have to wait until he is done.   The same could be said for bandwidth.  If the Internet is like an 10 lane interstate highway and all you have coming to your server is a gravel road you can expect to have slow downs. 
4. Addon and Subdomains -  Most of the webhosts out there will help you get your own domain name and in most cases most of them will give you unlimited subdomains.  Subdomains would be domains like myspace.projectspossible.com or yourspace.projectspossible.com.  They have your actual domain name you are just indicating a different area of your domain.  An Addon domain however is an entirely different domain that is controlled under the same account.  So I have 1 account with Flexihostings but I get to have 10 additional domains or Addons on that account basically letting me manage 10 different domains.  For example http://www.masella.us is a domain that I have added on to my account.  It will point you to Projects Possible but it is an entirely different domain and I could put different content there if I wanted to.  Most of the time the Subdomains and Addon domains require that you use the domain name servers of your WebHost.
5. mySql, PHP, Cgi - These terms get back to what you want to run.  If you are going to need to run applications that require database access using PHP then you need to make sure that your WebHost will support them.  You should also check to make sure that the versions that you need are supported.  PHP 5 has been out for quite awhile and there are still many WebHosts using 4.X.  If your application needs 5 it will not run on that webhost.
6. Support Applications - Depending on how much help you need there are support applications that a WebHost will install that will help you setup some pre-defined applications.  For instance cPanel is a dashboard program that a lot of them will use that helps you manage your account.  From the cPanel you can add email addresses, subdomains, manage files, etc..  Fantastico is an application that simply installs other applications into your account.  If you want to run WordPress for example Fantastico can install it for you.
7. Space - How much do you get to store your “stuff”?  Depending on what you want to do space can become a critical factor.  Images and Video can take up large amounts of space.   Most webhosts will let you buy more but it just adds to your monthly fees.  Get an account that is going to offer you the space that you need with room to grow.  My account at Flexihostings gives me 150,000 MB.  More than adequate for what I am needing.
8. Price - Finally, it gets down to price. This is always an important consideration and with so many webhosts out there you have to weigh what you are getting against the price that they want to charge.   Make sure when you do your comparisons on price that you take into account all of the special deals as well as individual features.   When I just processed my renewal, Flexihostings was giving EXISTING customers a double offer.  If you renewed for 2 years you recieved 2 additional years for free.  In doing the math, this brought my price down to somewhere in the neighborhood of about $5.00 per month.

There are a ton of webhosts serving Internet users these days.  Some are fly by night, others well established.  What you need should be your utmost concern.  Make sure you ask their sales teams the clarification questions that you need answered and don’t be afraid to tell them what you want, you might be surprised that they will give it to you for little or no additional monthly fees.

Happy Hunting… If you’ve had good experiences (or bad) with your WebHost feel free to comment below.  My examples are from my host but there are plenty of others out there.

I stumbled upon the Xobni (Zob-nee) website when I was looking for email productivity tools.  After reading all of the pages, watching the video (see below) and signing up for the beta I was a bit disappointed that I could not immediately begin trying out what appeared to be a great tool.  They did however offer a “priority” beta and all I had to do was put their logo on my blog.  I’m thinking that they wanted to get links back to their site to increase their search engine rankings.   I finally got my invitation a few days ago and now I have an opportunity to comment on my initial impression.

The download and installation of the Xobni application was quick and relatively seamless.  Xobni does need to perform an initial synchronization with your email and on my machine with tens of thousands of pieces of email dating back to 2003 this process took about 35-40 minutes.

Once the installation was complete,  I had a new, minimizable window attached to my Outlook that was providing me with absolutely amazing analytical data about the emailer and other “associations” that are tied to the piece of email.

For this Initial Review I will highlight just a couple features that I have been using daily if not multiple times a day.   Remember my goal was efficiency and productivity and I can honestly say that in just one week’s worth of use, Xobni delivered!!! 

1. Search - As many of you know, I use 2 Outlook Add-ins.  I use Nelson Email Organizer (NEO) specifically for it’s Search capability.  What I don’t particularly like about NEO is that it really isn’t integrated into Outlook, it is a separate application that loads on top of Outlook.  With Xobni, I now have search capability available to me ALL the TIME in the Xobni side window.  Unlike an Outlook search, the Xobni search is also lightning FAST.  Additionally, the Xobni search results are displayed in a single pane and match not only email messages, but individuals as well.  Extremely impressive to me and in the first day of my installed Xobni I probably used that feature alone at least 2 dozen times. 
2. The Xobni email tab -  There are two tax on Xobni.  On this tab you get a graphical representation of when (times of the day) you exchange email with the emailer, other people who exchange email with the emailer, conversations being held with the emailer, and files that have been exchanged with the emailer.   This tab really helps see what is going on with the person.  In my first day of use I was able to determine if I had sent specific files to individuals that I should have sent to them.  
3. The Organize Tab in Xobni is like a small dashboard of what is going for ME in Outlook.  You will see on this tab section your Upcoming Appointments, and Tasks.  There is also a section at the bottom of the tab showing people that you haven’t emailed with recently so you can “stay connected”.

I must say, in just a few minutes of my beta review, Xobni is going to be an Outlook tool that I will NOT be able to live without.  It makes my email time so much more productive, but beyond that it really helps to make it more organized.  The toolset and functionality is something that I wish that ClearContext would have thought of so that I could get it all in a single interface.   Since they didn’t, Xobni is where I am at and I hope they are successful.  I know I will be a customer!  Get signed up to download the beta here.

This is the first in a series of a few articles that I will be sharing on little tips and tricks in Microsoft Excel that I have accumulated or built over the last few months.  I’ve incorporated most of these into an Excel workbook or two to meet my specific needs.  I’m not really a Visual Basic for Applications programmer so I probably won’t be able to help out much in customizing…I just tweak things a bit here and there with help from online resources like Excel Forums. 

In this post, I want to show you how you can have a series of checkboxes in a column and when you “check” the checkbox it populates the cell directly to the right of the checkbox with the current date.   I use this in a project management spreadsheet where I have any number of projects all with common tasks that must be completed.

If you look at the spreadsheet above you will see that there are 3 columns… what you don’t see over to the far left in column A is the name of the task that I want to complete…  When I create a new project this portion of my spreadsheet is populated with a series of expected dates based on a set of known criteria.   I want to be able to come to this worksheet and not only quickly review a project and what needs to be completed but I want to be able to quickly update the “work” that was done on a project and have it give me the date that it was completed.   This is where my checkbox routine comes into play…  by simply clicking on the checkbox I can indicate the task is complete and it will make a permanent record of when it was completed… If I check it by mistake I can uncheck and it will also remove the date.

So how do I do this?

Sub Process_CheckBox()

Dim cBox As CheckBox
Dim LCol As Long
Dim LRow As Long
Dim Rng As Range

  LName = Application.Caller
  Set cBox = ActiveSheet.CheckBoxes(LName)

'Find row that checkbox resides in
  LCol = cBox.TopLeftCell.Column
  LRow = cBox.TopLeftCell.Row
  Set Rng = ActiveSheet.Cells(LRow + 1, LCol + 1)

'Change date in cell to the right of CheckBox, if checkbox is checked
If cBox.Value > 0 Then
  Rng.Value = Date

'Clear date in column B, if checkbox is unchecked
Else
  Rng.ClearContents
End If

End Sub

The key lines here are:

• Set Rng line which determines the row and column to place the date… You may tweak these to be +2, +3, whatever you need based on where and how you place yoru checkboxes in your spreadsheet and where and how you want your dates to appear.
• Rng.Value sets the date if there is a check in the checkbox
• Rng.ClearContents clears the date if the checkbox does not have a date

To use the routine you must open the Visual Basic Editor in Excel - Alt+F11, Click on Insert, Select Module and then Paste the Code above.   In your spreadsheet you would then right click on your checkbox and Assign a Macro to it… the macro is called Process_Checkbox.  Now every time you check the checkbox it will run this macro and it will insert the date.