It also shows you whether you clients are on Facebook  or LinedIn . It is easy to increase your Social Media networks by using Xobni as well as giving you some useful information about who you are engaging. It will show you their Avatar  if it is connected to LinkedIn  or Facebook  as well.

It is definitely the most business friendly tool that I have added in the past few months but to my knowledge is only available to Microsoft Outlook  users. There is a free version to check out and an upgraded at a cost. In my mind, money really well spent. Enjoy!

Check it out and add your comments below:

When I bought my 82-year-old father a computer, I never imagined the repercussions that act would have on our whole family. My father was no longer as physically active and I knew of other retirees that were keeping contact with ex-business friends on the Internet. Every member of our immediate family was online and in a total role reversal…the son bought the father a computer.

Dad had no computer experience whatsoever but my agreement with him was that within one week of set-up he would send me an email. That deed accomplished, I was amazed when the next week, he forwarded me a copy of an email that he’d sent to B’nai Brith Canada in search of the email address of the B’nai Brith in Uruguay. The body of the Uruguayan email held the answer: my grandfather, Harry.

80 years ago, after two trips back to Russia to bring my Grandmother’s family to Canada, my grandfather deserted his wife and two children(my dad and his brother), running off to South America with my Grandmother’s niece. My grandmother, not able to provide for her two children, placed my father and his brother in an orphanage. In the early 1920’s, it took seven years to declare her husband legally dead so that she could marry again and seven years later she reclaimed her children. The children had a new and loving father, but the scars left in my father’s psyche were deep. He never forgave his father’s flight.

In the 1950‘s, an Aunt contacted my father and tried to establish a relationship. From time to time she would furnish him with some news of his father’s family, but even what she knew was sketchy at best. My father learned that somewhere in Uruguay he had a half-brother and that other members were dispersed throughout the world. Their family history was similar to many Jewish families: dispersal and reunion.

Within one week of the now famous Uruguayan email he received a response titled “Your father’s family found”. Eighty years of pain melted as he was able to establish an e-mail relationship with his elder half nephew. Sadly, he found that his half brother had died just three years earlier, and his father had died in 1945. His half brother had three children: A daughter living in Israel and two sons in Uruguay, all of them on the Internet.

E-mails with old family photos began arriving and then were forwarded around the world. Finally, my father flew from Edmonton, Alberta to join us at Toronto International Airport to meet the elder half-nephew and his wife. We spent the afternoon trying to piece the family tree together and trying to soothe some of the hurt my grandfather had left as we began new relationships.

All my life, I’d watched my father struggle with abandonment issues from with events that took place three-quarters of a century ago. Years of pain seemed to fade away in the joy of coming together with our Uruguayan cousins. For us, Cyberspace has proved to be an excellent form of family therapy. I now know that buying my father a computer was the best money I’d ever spent.

Here is what I don’t get….I sell Real Estate and make a good living because I pride myself on returning phone calls AND emails as fast as I can. I have often found myself the REALTOR chosen because I do the small thing of returning calls and emails. If I am in meetings/away or cannot respond right away, I let the client know and give them good options.

The stats from service industry research say that service providers do not respond quickly to their emails. Someone sending an email is already on the Internet and moving at high-speed expecting full information. They expect responses and communication at the speed that they are moving. They are not willing to wait and come from a generation that thinks “Microwave” is slow cooking.

Here is what I really don’t get though…often when I send emails from my database, they bounce back telling me that the mailbox is full, over quota or that the email address is not active anymore. Email addresses are easily forwarded from one to another and boxes can be cleaned out. There is a lot of software that recognizes SPAM and deals with it so that you only receive valid emails. Changing your email address will only cut back on SPAM for a short while if you are using the web to market yourself and your services. SPAM is snail mail flyers on Steroids, bothersome but not the end of the world as we know it.

Most of us have numerous email addresses; choose one and make it your base email with all your other addresses forwarding to that email address. I suggest making it part of your branding which means it includes your name, so that if you move from one Company to another, your email address never changes and is easily recognizable as part of your brand. Make it your email address for life!

I am amazed that people in “Business” would change their contact information without notifying past clients or connections…..however my database proves me wrong, especially with email addresses. What is even more amazing is that I have been the recipient of business cards that have old and unused email addresses on them at the time they are given to me or I meet someone who tells me that “sorry…this is my old card or old email address” or says “OOpps, I don’t have my card with me!”

Our Industry Organizations are constantly trying to educate and update the members but are reporting big problems with out-of-date databases or members who do not want to use email.

So here is my solution! Do not get an email address, a computer, a Blackberry or PDA and whatever you do: DO NOT RESPOND TO EMAIL!!! Your market will be easy prey for those of us who do!

Technology will not take your business but competitors with it will! It’s time to get in the game and put care and energy in your email etiquette. You will reap great rewards!!