The SyncFriend plugin creates a menu that appears at the top of your Outlook inbox, where you can access your account information as well as start and stop your syncs. If you prefer, you can choose to just sync a specific contact folder to the service, instead of the whole thing.

Other features of this service include mobile clients, address book de-duping and calendar sync between Outlook and your phone. You can register for a free account here.

• Outlook Hotmail Connector 32-bit
• Outlook Hotmail Connector 64-bit

According to LiveSide’s tests, you’ll need to first uninstall the old Connector before installing the new one, but there are no major changes between versions, in terms of features. Likely this new update just address some minor bugs, so it’s not a critical update this time around.

The download page reminds Outlook Connector users of the many benefits of this software, including the ability to:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your contacts in Windows Live Hotmail.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.
• Manage, and synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Windows Live Calendar from Outlook.

• Your Safe Sender List/Blocked sender list/Safe Recipient lists are synchronized between Outlook and Hotmail.
• Send/receive works like your other Outlook accounts.
• Your Hotmail account status appears in the Outlook status bar.
• Rules work with the Hotmail account in Outlook even if it’s not your primary account.

The Task Organizer lets you change the due date on tasks, manage and view all tasks, and when the sidebar is closed, it will pop up reminders when you have overdue items.

In the new sidebar, you can also view the status of your projects, pin the most important projects for quick access, edit and create new tasks right in the sidebar and filter tasks by date, category, priority or other options.

The sidebar features a “Project” tab as well which you can switch to in order to gain access to your project list and its associated tasks, files and contacts. Here, you can add free-form notes to projects, move and rename projects and quickly jump from this tab directly to the associated email folder for that particular projects.

As always, ClearContext still helps with filtering your barrage of incoming email with its automatic filing and organizational features, including the great option to automatically file entire email threads from the inbox. it also lets you quickly turn emails into appointments or tasks, automatically reminds you to follow up on sent email you need a reply on, offers Do Not Disturb and Autosign features and a lot more.

Registered v5 customers can download v5.1 here. New customers can purchase v5 here.  if you’re using the older version of ClearContext (Pro v4), you can purchase an upgrade to v5 here.

What this means is that developers can build applications that run inside Outlook without having to build an entire Outlook plugin. Instead, the developers can “piggyback” their gadgets on top of Xobni’s plugin, explains TechCrunch in a recent blog post.

Contextual gadgets appear when a current email address matches certain criteria, says Xobni. Like a flight check-in gadget could run when a user views an email with a travel itinerary.

Since Outloook reaches some 600 million users, it’s not a program email gadget makers want to ignore. Interested developers can sign up here to get started using Xobni’s new Developer Preview.

Once you register an account with the service using Twitter authorization, you’re provided with a unique email address you can use to post to Twitter. When you have something you want to share, you simply email it to the private address and it will post to your account.

You can also use the service to receive Twitter updates via email. If you follow a lot of users, then you’ll probably want to choose the digest option, which includes all the updates posted during the time frame you specify.

This isn’t the only Twitter/Outlook type tool we’ve uncovered. Take a look at TwInbox for another option.

To try this new plugin, visit the SenderOK homepage here to download it for free.

Other plugin features include the ability to get updates on your contacts and their companies within Outlook, a search feature for easily locating email, links, and attachments, and a drag-and-drop method for sharing news from your contacts via email or Twitter.

Click here to in you’re interested in trying the new Outlook plugin. Note that you’ll need to have signed up with Gist first before you can use it.

Some of the more recent add-ons integrate social networks into your inbox for a bit of social CRM while others focus on more advanced search and organizational tools.

Below are some of the more recent ones I’ve come across.

(One caveat: I haven’t used all of these in the list below myself. However, the ones I have used in the past – Lookeen, Xobni, and ClearContext – all worked well.)

NEO Pro 4.1 (www.emailorganizer.com) - Automatically manages your inbox and catalogs all email messages using virtual folder structure to significantly reduce email overload and boost overall productivity – with no manual upkeep, clicking, or dragging to folders.

Lookeen (www.lookeen.net) - Provides a fast search for all things in Outlook.

Xobni (www.xobni.com) - Helps find emails, conversations, contact info & attachments faster while integrating social networks and email analytics features.

ClearContext Professional (www.clearcontext.com) - Keeps messages organized by suggesting the right folders to instantly file messages and conversations with one-click.

Chilibase for Outlook (www.chilibase.net) - Easily search and track all contacts and conversation threads.

RedCritter (www.redcritter.com) - Plugs documents, tweets, messages, maps and more — all related to the message you are currently viewing — into Outlook.

SimpyFile (www.techhit.com) - Turns filing Outlook messages into a one-click action and suggesting the correct target folder.

Auto-Mate (www.pergenex.com) - Applies flexible rules to your Outlook folders periodically, automatically organizing your mail in the manner of a personal assistant.

Advanced Folders Watch (http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/folders_watch/) - Monitors new mail messages and posts appearing in Microsoft Outook folders and public folders on Microsoft Exchange Server.

E-mail Follow-Up (www.mapilab.com/outlook/email_followup/) - Reminds you if an email you sent did not receive a reply after a certain time, thus requiring a follow-up email.

Now that documentation has been made publicly available. On MSDN, anyone can read through all the details about the PST Structure Specification, including all the data structures it uses, examples, considerations, data algorithms, and product behavior.

Armed with this info, developers will be able to interoperate with PST data in both server and client scenarios on the platform of their choice. You can access the full spec details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff387869.aspx.

As always, the Connector allows you to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail email, calendar, and contacts from within Outlook. Additionally, the new version includes the following features:

• Junk filter settings Your Safe Sender List/Blocked sender list/Safe Recipient lists are synchronized between Outlook and Hotmail.
• Integrated Send/Receive Send/receive works like your other Outlook accounts.
• Integrated connection status Your Hotmail account status appears in the Outlook status bar.
• Rule support for secondary accounts Rules work with the Hotmail account in Outlook even if it’s not your primary account.

If you have Outlook 2010 Beta installed and have a Hotmail account in your profile, you’ll be prompted to upgrade. If you need to install the Connector manually, you can grab the download from the links below:

• Outlook Hotmail Connector 14.0 for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 32-bit
• Outlook Hotmail Connector 14.0 for Outlook 2010 64-bit

John O'Donnell
Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

John O'Donnell
Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

John O'Donnell
Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

Although developers could already access .pst data using Messaging API (MAPI) and the Outlook Object Model, notes Lorimer, that was only possible when Outlook was installed on the desktop. Now, by opening up the .pst’s specifications, developers will be able to “read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice.” When complete, the documentation will be released under Microsoft’s Open Specification format, which means that anyone can implement the .pst file format “on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

According to the blog post, Microsoft’s decision to open up the .pst is another example of the commitment to the Interoperability principles, announced last year, and data portability is a key part of those principles.

Via the Nubli toolbar, you’re provided with a handful of “quick action” buttons which let you take some sort of action with the email in question. You can adjust the email or contact priority, archive the email if nothing needs to be done with it, flag it for follow up, or set a reminder to deal with the email later. Of course, you can still reply or forward the email instead.

From the integrated Nubli dashboard, you can track all of the email processing you’ve done so far to see which items need follow up as well as a list of unread emails sorted by priority.

In addition, Nubli also uses an intelligent tagging system which automatically assigns tags or labels to new email conversations. Initially, you have to train the system by tagging items yourself but after some time, Nubli figures out what tags should be used and assigns them for you. This saves a lot of time for users who can then use the tags to search for both emails and attachments.

If you want to give Nubli a try, you can download the plugin for either Outlook 2003 or 2007 from the Nubli homepage.

Now you can add Twitter to the list of Xobni features. In the latest version of the Xobni plugin, you're able to see the most recent tweets from the person whose email you’re reading. The plugin acts as a mini Twitter client as well, allowing you to reply directly to users, tweet, retweet, follow/unfollow, and view Twitter profiles all from within the Xobni sidebar.

Although you can manually enter in the Twitter name of the email contact you’re viewing, Xobni will attempt to locate the person’s Twitter account automatically. To do so, it performs a search for possible matches based on their name and you can choose the right one from the list provided. 

In order to access the update, existing Xobni users must download the latest version of the Xobni plugin.

Other improvements available in the update include numerous bug fixes, tweaks, and speed improvements. The latest version now officially supports Windows 7, too.

Recently, the YouSendIt announced a new feature for the Outlook plugin that makes file sharing via email even easier than before. With their latest Outlook plugin, you now have the ability to send entire folders via email with just one click. These folders can be as large as 2 gigabytes in size, too! You’re also able to configure Outlook to automatically send files over a certain size via YouSendIt or you can have it prompt you instead.

According to a June 2009 study from Osterman Research, the average worker sends and receives 44,700 e-mails per year, 29 percent of which have file attachments.  Of those attachments, 45 percent are larger than 10 MB, so there’s a clear use case for implementing YouSendIt in a business environment.

Once signed up, you can see an overall snapshot of your email activity, you can compare and contrast your stats with friends and colleagues, and you can evaluate how efficient you are at working that inbox of yours. The online service will even provide you with personalized tips on how you can improve your email effectiveness. 

If you’re a already a ClearContext for Outlook user, you can get started by clicking the “Compare your stats online” link in Outlook. If you want to try ClearContext for free, you can download it here.