random neuron misfires

After extensive testing of Xobni’s Outlook search tool through several versions and iterations (including being on their beta testing team), I’m finally giving it up, for good. It simply does not work for an Outlook user at the level where I use Outlook (hundreds of emails a day, hundreds of thousands of emails in the archives). I’ve posted about my Xobni frustrations before.

Let me explain:

I use Outlook primarily in two places:

1. Work desktop machine running Outlook 2007, connected through Exchange. This machine is tightly controlled, monitored and locked-down. I can’t reconfigure or install anything within this Outlook instance at all.
2. Personal VMware session running Outlook 2007, connected through work VPN to Exchange and locally to a .pst file which contains my Personal Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, etc.

When I’m working from the NYC office, I use Exchange through Outlook, with no add-ins, extensions or anything other than a locked-down instance of Outlook 2007 for managing email, calendaring, tasks, notes and contacts.

When I’m working from the CT office (the other 90% of the time), I use Outlook through VMware Workstation, connected to the work Exchange server over the VPN to retrieve and compose/respond to my work-related emails. I also have my work Calendar, Tasks and Notes available in the same instance. I have my Personal Calendar (in it’s own .pst file) overlaid on top of my work Calendar, so I can see my appointments in aggregate for both personal events as well as work meetings.

So far, this is a pretty normal usage scenario for any user of these kinds of tools.

When I install Xobni into Outlook, I make sure that the VPN is disconnected and that all mail in the cached .ost file was properly indexed, checked and verified to be intact and not damaged in any way. I also went into the Xobni settings and:

1. …disabled all of the “phone home” features of the product
2. …disabled the Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype integration. I don’t use those additional features of Xobni, and while connected to the VPN, they would simply fail anyway. Xobni doesn’t allow me to set a proxy server anywhere, and it can’t use the default one as configured in MSIE or the environment.
3. …disabled any and all automatic indexing and background indexing

But when I log into the VPN, launch Outlook, and Xobni tries to start up, it will start up and then completely hang Outlook at random points during the function. When Xobni hangs Outlook, I have to hard power-off the VM and reboot. I can’t shut Outlook, and I can’t shut down the VM cleanly, because whatever Xobni does, hangs the entire machine itself. I suspect (and this is just a theory), that Xobni is trying to get outside to the live Internet, and blocks, hanging Xobni, which hangs Outlook, which hangs the underlying VPN, which hangs the network interface, which hangs Windows.

I’ve installed Outlook Shutdown for Outlook and KnockOut, in an attempt to get Outlook to close completely and fully when requested, but it still hangs. I can’t kill Outlook.EXE via Task Manager (Task Manager hangs too, and running any other Windows application also hangs, including Start -> Run -> CMD.EXE and opening Windows Explorer). It’s a huge mess when Xobni hangs everything up.

And what’s worse, is that when I have to hard-power off the Windows VM, it corrupts the open .pst and .ost files that Outlook uses, which necessitates that I run SCANPST.EXE and SCANOST.EXE on them to repair them.

Not fun.

But when I run Outlook with /noextensions /safe (other Outlook command line switches can be found here), all works fine and dandy. When I uninstall Xobni using Totall Uninstaller (great tool, highly recommended), and run Outlook in “normal” mode, all works fine and dandy.

I reported my issues in great detail, as well as the steps to reproduce them, on the Xobni Community Support site, and received thousands of post views, but not a single response to any of them. I just visited their support forum, and noticed that it’s been revamped with a whole new interface, and a whole new hosting provider (“Get Satisfaction”, an ironic name considering Xobni does nothing of the sort for their users).

But they’ve purged and deleted all previous threads, discussions, topics, and users from the system. So now my posts are gone, as well as my account, account history and any threads or comments I’ve created or responded to. Nowhere on the Xobni blog do they mention revamping their community site nor do they mention any sort of migration path from the old community site to the new one.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. That is the last thing you want to do to help germinate a community of enthusiastic users around your product is to purge them, boot them out and tell them to start over again from the beginning.

And so, I’m doing the same with Xobni now. Their product is buggy, hangs, crashes and corrupts Outlook and its data. Avoid it and look for other Outlook search solutions (X1 seems to be gaining in popularity these days).

Something else that I found while searching for Xobni alternatives, is Trog Bar, a very odd name for a very slick product. It’s a tool that docks on your desktop, and can ferret through all of your email, looking for “actionable” emails. It then uses something called “Task Sense” to determine the priority of those actionable items, and sorts them accordingly.

I’m still searching for a better way to search, sort, and analyze my emails in Outlook because there really is nothing else out there that works right.

“The trouble is that AdSense is a chaotic and complicated system, and we are all trying to make sense of it with a lot of missing information.”

Keep that quote in mind if you’re an AdSense publisher.

AdSense is a complicated system. It is also a black box. What we see through our AdSense reports, is exactly what we’re allowed to see. There’s a lot of complexity behind the system that Google does not want you to see. This is precisely why it is a violation of the AdSense TOS, to share your specific earnings amounts, percentages and such… because collecting that information over time, would allow someone to discover their weighting, their algorithms and their methods.

The GPL case continues

“If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys.”

That’s the latest we’ve heard from James Fisher at $COMPANY. It was the first of two official threats from them. Apparently because they have “investor money”, they think they can just ignore US Copyright Law and the GPL. I can’t say more on this right now, pending our investigation. Lawyers and the community is involved, backing us up 100%.

Laptop Death

After all that mess with eBay and my shiny new laptop, now it’s dead and needs to be serviced. Luckily for me (so far), in the absence of a receipt, the warantee is still valid for 3 more years.

Plucker News

The new Plucker site is coming along very well, now that I realized I needed to manually load Apache::Table. Without it, Apache::Request and mod_perl would randomly “forget” %vars, and cache data between requests. Now it’s all working well. Version 1.2 is being beta’d now, the new site launch should be soon before the official announcement of the 1.2 Plucker release.

We will be selling some shwag from the site soon to show our support of the community, and in the hopes that they can show their support of us. We may also need the funds to help fund attorneys in our defense of the GPL violations we’ve been dealing with.

Employment

Status: None.

Triathlon Training

Training goes well, but deadlines have slowed this down a bit. I need to get back on the road, with a road bike soon. I’m addicted to the mileage now. I feel the years of mileage coming back, legs and lungs feel more powerful than ever.

I’m very impressed with how much E has taken onto the sport, having never bicycled competitively before. It’s going to be my turn soon.. competitive running. Ug.