Social Networking comes to Outlook
Microsoft is extending its connector system. Its original incarnation simply allowed connections to web based mail systems. Integrated into the new Office 2010 (available in June) and available as add-on to Office 2007 comes a new Outlook Social Connector (OSC). This will allow content from social network sites to be viewed directly from within Outlook.
The first connector already available is for LinkedIn which lets users view details and photos of contacts from the site within Outllook. It also pulls in updates from the social networking site to keep contacts up to date and allows you send e-mails directly. OSC is to be extended later this year to include Facebook and MySpace.
A feature that is useful when these connectors are installed is that when viewing ANY e-mail Outlook extends the window to display other activities with the person who sent the e-mail. For example these include other mails, attachments, meetings etc.
For more information see the links below:
Outlook Social Connector this is a pre-requisite
http://www.linkedin.com/outlook
Note: All downloads are currently beta versions
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