This may not be news to some of you, but I have recently found time to investigate the Outlook Social Connector that can pull data directly from Facebook / LinkedIn / etc., based on the contacts that you already have!
The reason why I thought I needed this in my life, is because since purchasing a Windows Phone 7, the integration with Facebook really surprised me, especially as I’m not a fan of Facebook at all!
Microsoft have integrated friends in Facebook directly into the address book within the WP7 operating system, meaning that you can instantly access a person’s record, regardless of ‘how’ you wish to contact them, i.e. by email, text or writing on their wall.
There are plenty of examples online of the Outlook Social Connector, so I won’t bore you with them, but here’s the basic premise to whet your appetite:
- You download (see below) and install the Outlook Social Connector for Office 2003, 2007 and 2010
- Tell the Connector which social networks to connect to
- Add in your username and password details
- Press Save and that’s it.
Now, when you open an new email inside of Outlook and begin to type a message to a friend, as normal, the Outlook Social Connector fires-up in the background and goes off to Facebook (or whatever other social sites that you added) and brings back their recent activity and shows it at the bottom of the email.
Microsoft’s Channel 9 video announcement of the Facebook connector is available here, along with a demo of how it works.
Brilliant!
Download links:
- Outlook Social Connector for Facebook (from Microsoft)
- Outlook Social Connector for LinkedIn (from LinkedIn)
- Outlook Social Connector for Windows Live (from Microsoft)
