Three extensions exemplify this trend. These services are quite similar. Xobni has the longest track record. it started as a consumer-based service, gaining a following for its search capabilities in Outlook. Search is Outlook’s inherent weakness. Neither DocVerse nor Harmony have deep search capabilities like Xobni. That may only be a temporary issue for DocVerse. Last week, Google announced that it had acquired DocVerse. We expect that will in some way translate into better search in the weeks and months ahead for the DoVerse service.

Harmony

Harmony is the newest of the group. The Mainsoft service is a mash up between Google Docs and Outlook. It also puts SharePoint directly into Outlook. Like most Outlook extensions, Harmony pulls Google Docs or Sharepoint into an Outlook sidebar.

The service is intended to ease attachment overload by creating a central place where people can access Google Docs. It’s a drag and drop environment that allows people to drag email attachments into the Harmony sidebar.

A document may also be dragged into an email where it appears as a link for the recipient. The recipient may access the document by signing into their Google Docs or Google Apps account.

The service is now available as a free download. It is compatible with Sharepoint 2007 and Sharepoint 2010. It will be available later this year as an extension for Microsoft Office.

DocVerse

DocVerse plays a similar role to Harmony. The service synchronizes in the Outlook Sidebar. The widget associates a link to the document that is getting the edit. Every modification is synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online.

Xobni

Xobni provides what Outlook really needs. Great search. It will search Outlook and external social networks and third party applications to get a fuller profile of the contact. In November, the company released Xobni Enterprise. The service gives I.T. administrators the ability to deploy and manage the plugin across the enterprise. it also offers integration across services such as Salesforce CRM and Sharepoint.

Outlook Has Come A Long Way

The old days are over for Outlook. It’s now entering an era where the degree of collaboration will center around a hyperlinked environment more so than document-based systems. The enterprise is becoming more web-oriented and Outlook is no exception to the change.

This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like:

While this extension doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of Delicious’ other browser add-ons, the team noted that the public demand for a Chrome extension prompted them to release a beta earlier than they would have liked.

“It doesn’t have all the API’s needed and it’s missing a good chunk of the functionality we believe it needs, but we’re getting so many requests for the Chrome extension that we’re going to make this available sooner than we originally planned…

“As soon as Chrome is able to support the functionality needed we’ll ensure the features of this extension matches that of our other browser add-ons. There are still some interactions we’re not quite happy with that we’ll address shortly, but we wanted to give you an official Google Chrome extension as soon as possible.”

What do you think? Does the new Delicious extension make you want to use Chrome more? Or if you’re a Chrome fan, does this move give you a renewed interest in Delicious? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

What Will Happen to Picnik?

For Google, this acquisition would make a lot of sense. After all, with Picasa Web Albums, Google offers one of the most popular online photo sharing sites and while it offers some basic editing features, it doesn’t offer anything close to Picnik’s feature set. Picasa, too, is one of the few Google services that still relies heavily on a desktop client and as Google continues to push its online services, it’s only natural for Google to want to offer a better online photo editor as well. Indeed, according to Googleown announcement, the company will work “hard on integration and new features.”

The Picnik team will move to Google’s Seattle offices and judging from the announcement, there will be no changes in the company’s management and engineering time.

What about Picnik’s Relationship with Flickr?

Picnik has a close partnership with Yahoo’s Flickr, where it is the default photo editor. It will be interesting to see if Flickr plans to make any changes to this agreement in the near future. In today’s announcement, Google notes that it plans to continue to support “all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.”

Find in Page for iPhone

The application “Find in Page” (iTunes URL), which was released last month in the iTunes App Store, is essentially a browser bookmarklet that adds an extra feature to mobile Safari. Not only does “Find in Page” locate all instances of a word within the displayed Web page upon launch, it also counts them, highlights them and lets you move from once instance to the next (and back again) by tapping arrow buttons. Of course, there are other free bookmarklets out there that provide similar functionality, but this one feels very much like a part of mobile Safari itself. It feels built-in.

The key differentiating factor that makes this pseudo plugin stand out from the rest is the semi-transparent toolbar that appears at the bottom of the screen once the bookmarklet is activated. From here, you can access the arrow buttons, word count information and you can pull up the search window again if you want to edit your current search or start a new one. Also, if you perform multiple searches, you can do so without having to reload the page - a definite time-saver. Finally, an “X” button closes the toolbar when you’re finished.

Although this small application may not sound as exciting as a revolutionary new feed reader or a brand-new interface for Facebook, it’s arguably going to be one of the most useful applications you’ve ever installed on your iPhone. For that reason, we think it’s well worth the $0.99 the developer is charging for the app. We’ve certainly paid far more for applications we’ve used much less than this. However, for those of you who balk at paying anything for apps, especially for ones that are essentially just a bit of code, you’ll be happy to know that a free “lite” version of this tool will be coming mid-month. Stay tuned to the App Store for its release.

As mentioned in a blog post late last year, Google is now preparing to roll out Wave to Google Apps customers along with the VoIP service Google Voice and 200 other improvements and updates to their current suite of office tools.

Google Wave: Innovative, Confusing

The technologies at the core of Google Wave are impressive. With an HTML5-enabled interface and real-time protocols for instant interaction, Wave was highly anticipated among tech enthusiasts prior to its launch. However, once beta testers gained access to the redesigned inbox experience delivered by Wave, the results were those of confusion, feelings of being overwhelmed and apparently, eventual abandonment.

That’s not to say Google Wave is a failure. The service is just a little too raw right now for everyday use by a majority of internet users. The problem with Wave stems from its overcrowded inbox of “waves” - threads of conversation updated in real-time. Within a wave, users can have IM-like chats, share and edit documents, and even “replay” a wave to see a history of the changes made. At launch time, anyone using the service could add any other user to a wave - even if that other user had no interest in participating. This led to an inbox filled with waves, only some of which may have been relevant or interesting. In addition, communicating in real-time, while nice for IM, may not be as productive when attempting to share the sort of longer thoughts and instructions typically sent out via email.

There are ways Wave could be streamlined for better ease-of-use, though. Whitelisting and blacklisting tools could lock down waves to invited participants only and better filtering mechanisms could help high-priority waves rank higher than others. Not all of these tools are available yet in the current version of the product, though, and some may never be.

Google Apps Users to Become Beta Testers?

Google is also investigating how to integrate some of Wave’s features into their other products.According to Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard, the company is “trying to learn and see what sort of use cases evolve from it and how it changes.” Yet even he admitted that Wave is “not nearly at the level of understanding and readiness of the core Google Apps services.”

So why is Google rushing to roll it out this year? The answer may be that Google simply wants a larger test bed to help them generate ideas for improving the service. Although we’ve highlighted several use cases for Wave in the past, a good many people still say they don’t see the need for it. But all the effort and development that went into building a product like Wave isn’t likely something Google wants to abandon so soon.

UPDATE: While we’re still waiting for an official response from Google’s PR team, we’ve been invited to an event at the Googleplex tomorrow “to see some innovations in two of our most popular products.” The event will begin at 10 a.m. PT (UTC -8) - stay tuned tomorrow for RWW’s live coverage of the event!

This is the current option for updating statuses in Gmail:

Google’s new tools, however, will better integrate with Google’s multimedia sites, YouTube and Picasa. (Currently, Google Talk users can share YouTube videos via chat, which prompts a miniaturized version of the video to pop up above the chat in progress.) Users will also be able to see “a stream of status updates from people they choose to connect with.”

In the meantime, however, we’re wondering how this feature will integrate with other status-sharing sites. Will Gmail and Google Talk’s new feature act as Google’s first steps into developing a social media client (like Tweetdeck) in its own right?

The new feature could start appearing on users’ screen as soon as this week. If you had this tool, would you use it?

According to Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure, design needs to be one of the top priorities for Internet startups, not an afterthought. These days, as McClure explains in a recent BusinessWeek.com article, the technical expertise it takes to engineer a basic back-end framework is at a much more accessible level than it was in years past, which means payroll dollars can be better spent on masterful designers.

“It’s actually pretty easy to write a Web-friendly app or Web site these days,” writes McClure. “But it’s still incredibly difficult to create visually appealing interfaces and, beyond that, to design them in ways that are compelling and engaging, drive calls to action, and are measurably adept at getting more customers to use your products.”

While coding languages can be learned through study and practice, having an eye for design is more of an innate talent. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people out there who are code masters and were probably born to practice their craft, or that solid engineering isn’t critical to the success of a startup, but design is a more artistic and creative talent that you either have or you don’t.

More importantly, the design of your product is what your users will interact with directly on a day-to-day basis. Opinions will be formed, rightly or wrongly, within seconds of laying eyes on your site and before they even have a chance to put your code to use. So before you go hiring a crack team of code monkeys, make sure to reserve some roster slots for design all-stars.