New Version of Plaxo

I was pleasantly surprised this evening when I logged onto Plaxo to grab a friends phone number and saw a message about getting a preview of the beta version of their next release.

I went ahead and moved forward with switching to the beta version and testing things out and I can tell you that I think the layout updates and improvements are a good thing. The site just feels more useful and well-arranged now.

My friend really hammered me for a long time about signing up and using Plaxo, which I’d never agreed to because I thought they’d just use my address as a spam magnet. Through much convincing, he finally won the argument and I signed up. I’ve been pleased ever since, especially the times I’ve crashed a computer and didn’t have to worry about losing my address book.

If you haven’t heard of Plaxo, go check them out, but here’s a few of the features and services you can look forward to as a user:

• synchronized contacts between Outlook and Yahoo (which I use) and numerous other contact management tools and systems
• online address book access and back-ups
• calendars and notes synchs
• automatic birthday reminders
• automatic information updates from other Plaxo users that are in your address book
• centralized online IM clients via Meebo in new v3.0