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Hello Rev2 readers! I was able to score us 25 Xobni beta invites for you. If you do not know what Xobni is, read my article here. After that, post a comment saying why you want a beta invite and what feature you are most excited about. Make sure your email address is correct when you post, so we can send you an invite code. I can say after just hours of using it, I love it and can see how it can drastically improve my email experience. Thanks goes to co-founder Matt Brezina for the invites!

EDIT: Invites now gone…sorry!

Email is essential to so many people and companies. Yet, email can easily become a burden or hindrance. If you are like me, you get 40+ emails a day that are legitimate and need attention. Most of these are clients and I must keep track of these emails. But, I get so many that sometimes it is hard to find and organize these emails. In steps Xobni to the rescue. Xobni is ‘inbox’ spelled backwards which is fitting as their goal is to “take back email”. Xobni is a Ycombinator funded project who has also taken additional funding from other firms and angels. The company is co-founded by Adam Smith (CEO) and Matt Brezina.

As of right now, Xobni is a plugin for Outlook, but I hear they will be releasing it for platforms as well. Since I am an avid Outlook user (I know booo hisss), I was happy to find this out. Xonbi runs as a side pane in Outlook and also has a menu item added to Outlook. The integration of the plugin looks pretty smooth.

Xobni creates a profile for ever person who sends you an email. This is where the core functionality of Xobni is. Each profile contains relationship statistics, contact information, related people, threaded conversations, shared attachments, and lightening fast search. Below we will talk about each feature.

Relationship Statistics - Xobni creates a graph which depicts when emails were received from this user. This allows you to see when might be a good time to try to contact this person. You also are able to see how many incoming messages and how many outgoing messages are associated with this user. The user is then ranked by number based on how much email is sent and received from them.

Contact Information -Xobni automatically extracts phone numbers from emails and associates it with this user. If you do not trust that this number is correct, you can mouse over it to see the email in which it came from. From this section you can also schedule time (I am assuming appointments or meetings) with this person.

Related People - The company believes there is a hidden social network to email. I can see where they are coming from and slightly agree. Xobni will analyze emails between yourself and your contact to find other contacts you two have in common. Clicking on a name in the related people list will show you that person’s profile.

Threaded Conversations - Xobni allows you to quickly find past conversations using a threaded conversation system. It lists these conversations as a title on a single line. Clicking one of the entries on this will show you all emails associated to this conversation. From this view, you can open an individual email and reply, forward, or open the email in Outlook.

Shared Attachments - One of the most frustrating things for me is finding attachments in a list of emails. Xobni makes this much easier. It attaches all files sent from this user in a section for easy review. You can quickly open this attachment and also see which email it was associated with.

Search - I will say Outlook’s search feature is horrible. It takes forever to find the email I want and usually finds way more emails than I thought possible. Searching in Xobni does indeed look lightening fast. The search box is always present at the top of the plugin and when you type information, the search results update in real time. It breaks down the results by people and emails. Clicking on a person’s name will take you to their profile page.

There are some more features to Xobni that are cool, but maybe not quite useful like email anayltics. I am not sure I really need to know a detailed analysis of my email habits. Maybe you do- I don’t know.

Overall Xobni looks IMPRESSIVE! As a person who uses Outlook probably 2+ hours a day, I can definitely see the benefits to this plugin. In fact, not having an Outlook alternative is one of the main reasons why I will not switch to a Mac. Anyways, if you are an email user who sometimes lets things fall through the cracks, check out Xobni and take back your inbox.

Docstoc is a new document sharing community hoping to be the ‘YouTube of documents’ that was announced today at TechCrunch40. This designation has already been given to industry sweetheart Scribd, which has gain a lot of momentum and press. What sets apart docstoc, though, is private online file storage with the ability to store, categorize, and share content.

While Scribd can manage all sorts of documents, docstoc is trying to set itself apart by focusing more on professional documents such a business/legal, educational (term paper, notes, outlines, ect), and self expression documents (scripts, creative writing, ebooks, ect). However, any type of document can be uploaded.

The idea came when founder Jason Lawrence Nazar (Docstoc’s CEO) was routinely spending hours looking for documents for his clients at his other company Venature.com. Venature provides consulting and capital to new startups and these new startups were routinely looking for professional files like NDAs, contract agreements, ect. I find the best ideas are born out of one’s own necessities. Docstoc was supposed to launch in April (according to their preview video), but like any good startup, they are lagging a little behind. Boy does that sound familiar.

While I did not have beta access to the project, I did check out their blog, watched a video, and read some information. At docstoc, you can upload one file at a time or they allow a drag and drop feature that enables you to upload multiple files or folders. A very nice feature indeed. Docstoc has a great search feature, but if you cannot find what you want, you can request it and then the community can fill that request.

As mentioned above, docstoc also has some social network features built in. This allows you to see all files you have uploaded and what they have been rated by the community, all files you have downloaded, view you profile, see and message friends, and go to other user’s profiles. Sort of like Digg, users are ranked to see who are the top users of the docstoc community.

The ability for users to search and register blogs through their interface is also present within Docstoc. This creates a database of links to blogs that when searching for a specific subject, it can see if your blog might haver similar content and direct a user there. Like any other good viral service, they provide the ability to link and embed documents on other sites and blogs.

I think docstoc looks very interesting and it’s focus on professional documents is what excites me. I know I have spent countless hours looking for documents I need for business. Usually you find crappy documents or sites that try to get you to pay for the document (which is not necessarily bad as I have paid lawyers to create document’s for me).

From what little I could tell from their video, the UI looks nice and the usability features they have included, like drag and drop uploading, look very promising. They will have an up hill battle trying to take on Scribd, but I like their chances. One killer addition would be a nice Facebook application. Imagine students from a college being able to share notes or outlines from their Facebook account. Speaking of Facebook, you can sign into docstoc using your Google, Yahoo, or Facebook credentials. I really wish they would add open id support. Anyways, I hope to get a beta invite to this and take a closer look soon.

FireAnt, the desktop media player video blog/podcast directory, was acquired by SonicMountain today. SonicMountain also acquired Evan William’s company Odeo, which was a site dedicated to podcasting tools. SonicMountain rebranded to Odeo after the acquisition. From what I understand, the FireAnt branding will disappear and be incorporated into the Odeo brand.

FireAnt is a directory of podcast and video blogs that boasts 22,602 channels and 1,310,661 episodes and growing daily. With FireAnt you can create an account/profile, make playlists, add tags and ratings to episodes, and share these with friends. It almost seems like a social network for podcasting and video blogs.

One of the unique things about FireAnt is their desktop media player which is available for Mac and PC. I was not able to personally test it (though I would love to, hint ), but their media player can supposedly play all formats and will convert and sync videos with your mobile device. Now that I have an iPhone, this could be very useful to me. The player also has a built in torrent system and you can subscribe to, download, and watch internet TV channels (video blogs). The user interface of the desktop application look great.

So, with the acquisition of both Odeo and FireAnt, it will be interesting to see how these two holdings are merged together. Unfortunately, podcasting has never gained the mainstream popularity it can take to be huge, but incorporating internet TV into the mix could make things interesting. Another downside for SonicMountain/Odeo is the lawsuit that has been filed against the company in New York. Apparently there are 15 different counts in the lawsuit, but details on the specifics were not available.

Project management can be one of the most frustrating things in the world- especially when trying to manage virtual teams. I was able to get a test account for @task- a web based project management tool. Along with project management, @task boasts time tracking, issue tracking, portfolio management, integration with Outlook and SalesForce, mobile version (including one specifically for the iPhone), and other benefits. I was anxious to check out this app as I manage virtual teams and projects on a daily basis. After taking a look at their web page, I was looking forward to some web 2.0 goodness.

After logging into @task for the first time and accepting the license, I was presented with my demo account which was pre-populated with data for review purposes. My first impression was, “Wow! There is a lot going on with this page and I feel overwhelmed.” There is a lot of information on this page including overview of my projects, problem tasks, and open issues. There were a lot of icons on this page and being as how I have not used the system long, I did not know what they stood for and mousing over them didn’t display a tool tip or even an alt image description. I was also a tad disappointed by the look and feel. It didn’t seem very 2.0- it felt more like web 1.5. It has some nice ajax features, but the design feels a little corporate and dated. Their web page definitely has a different feeling from the product. I think it is good to keep your brand in sync when it comes to your site and your product.

Regardless of the design issues I saw, I was excited to really dive into some of these features. First I tried out the project management section. Like other project management tools, it contains tasks, notes (or messages), file attachments, create issues, and manage time lines among other things. As I got deeper into the project management subtasks, I quickly realized this software is more like a web-based MS Project and not like Base Camp or Clever Tools. It is much more technical and allows for much deeper planning — the tools you would want to find if you were running a very big project, where tools Base Camp or Clever Tools are more for smaller projects and teams and are more centralized around collaboration and organization.

There are features in @task like gantt charts, resource grids, and calendars which are all beautifully done and well executed using Flash. I was very impressed with these charts. Again, these are things you would find in a more technical desktop project management tool like MS Project or OpenProj. One of the features I really liked about the project management tool was the ability to estimate planned costs and planned revenue, track expenses and billings, and see how accurate those plans are.

Another big section in @task is the resource management section. It includes many sub-tools like user management where you can manage your users schedules, job functions, skills, work, and licenses. There is the job role tool which allows you to manage the unique positions people may hold at your company. There is also a time sheet tool for creating your own timesheets and managing and approving other user’s time sheets (for an admin account of course). A capacity planning tool to manage budgets and resources. There are a few others I won’t mention here. Again, there were many things you could go into at deep depth here and for a user like me, seemed like too much information.

Since I have an iPhone and love it, I was very eager to test out their iPhone interface. This is a feature I could find VERY useful since I am out in the field a lot. I loved the login page, which is trivial I know, but it captured my interest. Once I logged in, I was elated at what I saw. The user interface feels like Apple themselves designed it, which is a good thing. It was very snappy and responsive. From this interface I could view all my projects, notes, tasks, issues, and documents. I wasn’t able to add any new tasks, issues, or documents, but I was able to update their status and add notes to these entries. I wish I would be able to create new entries instead of just being able to modify them. I was finding myself wishing for a ‘Home’ button to go to the start page and I actually found one by clicking the @task logo. I think this was a great user interface enhancement that some iPhone web apps I have used have neglected. Over all, the iPhone interface was awesome!

While the interface seems a little dated and could use some improvements, overall @task is a very robust and technical web app. I think it is more suited to larger companies who need to track and control all aspects of a project and since the full name of the service is “@task Enterprise”, I guess that makes sense. They have incorporated many great features like exporting to MS Project, beautiful graphs and charts, powerful reporting, and web based interfaces for the iPhone, Blackberry, and wap2.0 compatible phones.

If you are running a project with a lot of resources, users, and for a larger corporation, @task could be the perfect solution for you. It is far better than MS Project and if I were running a large project that required a more technical and deep piece of management software, I would definitely choose @task. If you run a smaller project and company and want a project management tool that is centered on collaboration and organization, then you may want to look for something else. If not, I encourage you to take @task for a spin. They have a free 30 day trial as well.

Disclosure: I have a new web startup that deals with project management. While @task and my startup cater to different markets and projects types, I thought it was best to let you know this.

I used to be a staunch, die-hard Pocket Pc advocate. In fact, I still like the platform. The one thing I wholly disliked on the Pocket Pc was the internet experience. It is atrocious. Not only is it horrible, it is very expensive to get as well. Along came the iPhone and changed both of those things. The internet browsing experience is by far the best one to ever grace a mobile platform. Also, the price plans for data are way below current industry standards which makes it feasible for more consumers to use wireless internet.

So, the iPhone is bringing a whole new slew of mobile users to the market. We are becoming more mobile and the ability to have access to our data and services where ever we are is huge. The iPhone, and probably more devices later, are creating a huge new market that web 2.0 companies need to think about. As the iPhone is released to more countries and the price continues to drop, the iPhone will become more and more important to users and services boasting iPhone support will surely see an increase in their user numbers.

Companies are going to really have to evaluate and plan for this new mobile market. There are so many web apps I use that would be killer to have an iPhone version. If a competitor to a product or service I used offered an iPhone version, I would contemplate jumping ship. Since the iPhone cannot officially have third party apps installed on it and relies solely on web apps, more users will be turning to web 2.0 applications to fulfill their mobile needs. I can easily see someone who really learns to harness the user experience on the iPhone and can develop or design to meet that experience, can become a hot commodity to startups or companies. You could start your own iPhone development house similar to some of the Facebook development houses. In fact, Joe Hewitt has created an open source framework to get you started called iUI. Take a look.

What are some apps you would like to see mobile and on your iPhone? If you are a web 2.0 company/service, are you planning for this new market? Post your comments below.