It's amazing how much time I spend going through Outlook searching for emails - and it looks like I'm not alone.

By 2009, workers are expected to spend 41% of their time managing email. Receiving thousands of emails each week and organizing them efficiently is a task better suited to a machine than it is a person. With the average human brain capable of maintaining only 150 friendships, and with enterprises expected to spend more than $17 billion on email software in the next four years, that's why I was pleased as could be when I came across Xobni, a very "social" plug-in for Outlook which helps users find email conversations, contacts and attachments in a much more fluid, natural and efficient manner.

Installation of the plug-in was quick (although it did take a while to index all of the email in my Outlook). Xobni's features however (powerful email search, threaded conversations, email analytics, quick attachment discovery and phone number extraction) made me a believer.