Yahoo buys Xobni; some products have a year to live

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AppId is over the quota

Yahoo said Friday that it has bought contact management specialist Xobni for an undisclosed amount, presumably to enhance Yahoo Mail and its related applications.

But as to the future of Xobni’s own products—well, that’s not exactly clear. Xobni released a  FAQ indicating that the company plans to continue supporting its contact management tools for Outlook, but that other platforms may expire on July 2, 2014.

In a sense, that means that Xobni’s statements about continuing support could be seen as a bit disingenuous. “Not to worry — we aren’t pulling the rug out from under you. If you’re using a Xobni product today, you can keep using it,” the Xobni team said in a blog post.

However, Xobni won’t be accepting any more premium subscriptions, including  Xobni Pro, Xobni Enterprise, Xobni for Teams, the Xobni Salesforce Gadget, and the Xobni JIRA Gadget, the company said. Smartr Contacts for Android and Xobni for BlackBerry are no longer officially available for download, although the Android app will be pulled by the end of the day, the company said.

Xobni said that the Xobni plugin for Outlook, as well as its “premium features,” will be extended through July 2, 2014, but that it may release a new version for Outlook at that time. There will be no version for Outlook 2013, the company said.

Xobni’s Smartr for Gmail.

Xobni Pro for BlackBerry, the Xobni Salesforce Gadget and Xobni JIRA Gadget, Xobni Enterprise, and Xobni for Teams will all be extended for a year’s time. Only Xobni for Teams will live on, as part of the Xobni for Outlook platform.

The good news? Smartr Inbox for Gmail and Smartr Contacts for iPhone remain available for download.  While downloads may be unavailable at a later date, these products are expected to function normally for existing users through July 2nd, 2014, Xobni said. So grab them now.

The deal means that one of PCWorld’s best products of 2011 is now under the Yahoo banner. “The power within every Xobni product is that it responds to how you communicate,” Xobni said in its post. “Every day you demonstrate who and what is important to you. That can benefit not just your inbox or smartphone, but the many services you use. Yahoo! gets that, and they want us to use our platform to make many Yahoo! services better for you.”

Yahoo linked directly to the Xobni post in its corporate blog, presumably allowing Xobni to speak for itself as well.

Some of Xobni’s functionality will live on in rival products. Rapportive, for example, provides some contextual information about contacts, as Smartr does, with photos and recent social activity.

Yahoo has been on a spending spree of late. On Tuesday, Yahoo bought Qwiki, an iPhone app that turns photos and movies stored on the iPhone into a short film, complete with soundtrack.  Other recent purchases include Astrid, a to-do app; Summly, a news summarization service; GoPollGo, a social polling tool; and Jybe, a discovery and recommendation startup. And, of course, Yahoo bought blogging powerhouse Tumblr for $1.1 billion in May.

Additional reporting by Zach Miners of IDG News Service.

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2 New Videos on the Connected and Entertainment Experience with Microsoft Products

Back in December, I posted about a really neat video directed by Keith Rivers that highlighted how up and coming indie artist Andrew Belle used Windows 7 and Windows Live to create a song. If you liked that video, you won’t want to miss these two new videos that were also directed by Keith that go beyond Windows 7 and Windows Live to highlight the entire breadth of Microsoft products being used together to create some amazing experiences. These videos, along with the Andrew Belle video, were showcased at the Microsoft booth at CES with all the PCs and devices that were used.

Video 1: Making of a Flash Mob

Have you ever wondered what kind of work goes in to coordinating and planning a flash mob (click here if you don’t know what a flash mob is)? Using PCs such as the Dell Inspiron Duo (read Ben’s review) and the Samsung QX410, as well as their Windows Phones - local choreographers and dancers here in Seattle use Windows Live (Messenger, Mesh) and Kinect to plan and coordinate a flash mob at Pioneer Square. Pretty impressive.

Video 2: Road Trip to Mt. Hood

In this video, skiers and snowboarders head off on a road trip from Seattle to Mt. Hood to hit the slopes. While on the road, and then even on the slopes and from the lodge at an elevation of 6,000 feet, they use their Windows Phones, Kinect and Xbox, and the ASUS Eee Slate (read Ben’s review) to stay entertained with music, movies, and games.

I got on the phone last week with Keith to talk about these videos and get some backstory. For these two videos, Keith told me his initial approach was to do something similar to what they had done with the Andrew Belle video but with 2 new musicians. However as he began to concept the videos with Microsoft, they decided they wanted to focus on other real stories that branched beyond the music industry: one about coordinating a flash mob and another following a group of skiers on a road trip to Mt. Hood. Keith not only directed the videos but wrote both of them as well and he did so in just a matter of a few days. He had about a month to do these videos which included the writing all the way to finishing post-production and handing off the final videos to us (Microsoft) for CES.

Keith used resources around him for these videos. Keith happened to be good friends with Bobby Bonsey and Egan Orion who are flash mob choreographers and producers in Seattle. He had been fascinated by the idea of a flash mob and thought following the design and production of a flash mob could be really interesting for people to see. And Keith also grew up skiing in the Pacific Northwest and had done some really great videos early in his career on freestyle skiing. He also knew of some local skiers and snowboarders who participated in competitions in the area. So deciding to do a video on a flash mob and another on skiing came as easy choices. For the skiing video, he chose the location of Mt. Hood because of the weather and because it had a beautiful lodge that gave an antique, historic look he was looking for.

Each video shoot had its challenges. The shoot for the flash mob video was done pretty fast and because of that, Keith called it “one of the most insane productions we’ve ever done”. For the Mt. Hood shoot, getting the live-action shots of the skiers and snowboarders was pretty challenging and the lift shots proved to be really challenging with the person holding the camera literally hanging off the back to film. His team was also shooting live products in use, which sometimes took extra time to light correctly to adjust for the brightness and contrast of the screen. But on the other hand, Keith also recalls how much fun it was for his crew and the people in the videos to get to use some of the newest products like the Dell Inspiron Duo and Windows Phone 7, and how addicting Kinect Sports was and easy to pick up.

In making these videos, Keith worked with producer Rebecca Davis, TJ Williams Jr. who was their Director of Photography, Nick Pezzillo who was the editor for the flash mob video and Daniel Soderberg who was the editor for the Mt. Hood video.

Keith says he was gratified that Microsoft gave him the opportunity to go out and do some really creative stories with these videos. I certainly enjoyed them and am often fascinated by the backstory behind videos like these. I hope you enjoyed hearing the backstory for these videos!

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