If you're one of the many BlackBerry-toting hot shots who fret about the fastest, least laborious way to get their work contacts onto their phone, I have an answer for you. Or rather, Xobni does.

Xobni for BlackBerry is a utility that dramatically expands your mobile address book by ingeniously scanning all incoming and outgoing e-mail for contacts and phone numbers it can capture. It builds a profile for every e-mail it detects, regardless of whether you've typed it yourself, or if it's already in your address book. That includes people who have been copied in an e-mail, and e-mail addresses contained within the message body.

Xobni for BlackBerry is the first mobile version of the highly-useful Outlook add-on. We got a sneak peek at the BlackBerry Developer conference last November, and we're only too happy to take a deep dive now that it's available to everyone. We like the convenient and timesaving features, but there's still room to grow for this brand-new app. Be forewarned that Xobni is a premium app; although it's expensive for the casual 'Berry owner, the price point fits in with other BlackBerry apps geared towards business users.

Installation and performance

Xobni's secondary address book shows up on your BlackBerry in two locations--from  a standalone app you open from an icon, or from the Compose window (or Reply or Forward windows on most supported models). Just flick up toward the top of the screen to access Xobni's search bar. You can launch e-mails, text messages, and phone calls for anyone captured in a Xobni profile, plus view snippets from recent e-mail, calls, texts, and meetings. We personally prefer accessing Xobni from the BlackBerry address book instead of from the standalone app, though your tastes may differ. Performance-wise, we found Xobni to be sluggish--it should be able to load its screens with considerably more speed than it does now.

If you buy the BlackBerry-only version (more details in our pricing session below,) your Xobni address book will grow apace with your e-mailing. What's more useful is getting your existing Outlook contacts onto the BlackBerry, which you can do by subscribing to another premium feature called Xobni One.

Xobni One is a cloud-based service that essentially "syncs" your Outlook contacts to Xobni's servers, and then eventually populates your Xobni app on the BlackBerry. This option makes the most sense if you already use Xobni's Outlook plug-in. Either way, it  takes some leg work to register an account, download a new version of Xobni for Outlook, sign on to the account on both Outlook and the BlackBerry, and wait patiently (up to an hour in some cases) for the contacts to "sync".

We should note that Xobni's CEO, Jeff Bonforte, rejects the word "sync" in a technical sense because Xobni gathers and recombines data, rather than deletes duplicated profiles on either end. But sync makes more sense than saying that Xobni "maintains itself through the continuous flow of new information," so "sync" it is.

Xobni for BlackBerry doesn't have every feature we'd like to see. It isn't integrated with the dialer or calendar, two of the places you might want to engage a contact list (Xobni's Bonforte says this isn't currently possible, but that they're working on it.) We'd also like to review entire mail messages, not just the headers. Although the BlackBerry e-mail client does a good job searching for mail, the option to find specific messages with Xobni would not go amiss. Nor would being able to manage the Xobni One super address book from Xobni.com if not from the BlackBerry.

We think pictures say it best, so be sure to check out our slideshow for the finer details of how Xobni for BlackBerry works, and stay tuned for our video review.

Pricing and availability

Xobni for BlackBerry costs $9.99 for a one-time buy. It scans e-mails you compose and receive natively, without tying in to Outlook. To sync Outlook contacts with Xobni for BlackBerry, you'll need to buy into the cloud-based Xobni One service. That will drop the price of the standalone app to $6.99, and charge a $3.99 monthly subscription for Xobni One syncing. If you commit to a year's worth of Xobni One, Xobni charges $40 for the whole year and throws in the standalone BlackBerry app for "free."

Xobni for BlackBerry is available  for the BlackBerry Tour, Curve 8900s, and the Bold and Storm series smartphones. Try it by visiting www.xobni.com/mobile or by downloading it from BlackBerry App World, though it may take a few days after launch to show up for your region.

Right now Xobni is available as an Outlook plug-in and on BlackBerry, though Xobni's CEO, Jeff Bonforte, hinted heavily during our demo that iPhone, Android, and other mobile versions are in the works.

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Except for the much-ballyhooed arrival of Street Fighter IV, it's been a fairly quiet week in iPhone gaming. That said, there's always a steady stream of new and intriguing titles, as evidenced by this decidedly eclectic bunch:

1. Doodle Kart A charming little racing game in the increasingly popular "doodle" style, Doodle Kart offers top-down action across 25 different tracks. Collect power-ups as you go, unlock new stages, and try to beat the AI in all four difficulty levels. Alas, there's no multiplayer, but Doodle Kart offers plenty of fun for one. It's 99 cents, but you can test-drive the lite version free.

2. Frogger Inferno Picture the coin-op classic Frogger. Now picture your little jumper leaving a trail of fire as he hops, meaning he can't go back the way he came. That's Frogger Inferno in a nutshell. Lame! My advice: Stick with the original. Both versions cost 99 cents.

3. How to Train Your Dragon: Flight of the Night Fury Also known as "movie tie-in of the week." Of course, the movie's not even out yet, so it's hard to say how well the game represents it. But it looks an awful lot like the classic Glyder, though at $2.99, Dragon is two bucks cheaper.

4. Jailbreak: Voice Onrush Adapted (is that code for "copied"?) from the Nintendo DS title Escapee Go, this weird-looking arcade game with the weird name might prove enjoyable to fans of maze-escape challenges. You tell me: I'm not one of them.

5. ZombieSmash Yay! Zombies! Yes, the list of zombie-themed iPhone games is getting longer all the time, but there's always room for one more--especially one that has castle defense-style gameplay, lots of fun weapons (wrecking ball, anyone?), plenty of cartoonish gore, and a good sense of humor. ZombieSmash costs $1.99. Take a look:

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Google has updated the Chrome browser for most of its multiple versions on all platforms in the past few days, although most of the updates have been minor. However, high-priority security fixes have been made to the stable version of Chrome.

Five security fixes labeled "high" have been applied to the stable Windows version of Chrome, including a fix for a bug that was discovered by Sergey Glazunov. He has received the first $1,337 Chromium Security Reward for the discovery. The security fixes include plugging holes in tab sandboxing, memory errors occurring with malformed SVG images, integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects, and an cross-origin bypass error. One security fix applied to the Chrome beta plugged a hole created by memory errors in empty SVG elements.

One new feature in the stable version since the upgrade to v4 has been disabled. The experimental anti-reflected-XSS feature XSS Auditor was disabled because of rare but "serious performance issues," according to the release notes.

The Windows beta version now includes the translate infobar, for automatic page translation using Google's translate function when you visit a Web site with a different language than your system default.

The Chrome dev channel has been updated for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Google says that users on all three platforms should see significant improvements in the performance of the autofill feature. Mac OS X dev channel users have also received many fixes to the bookmark bar, but that users will still experience significant problems with their bookmark folders for now. A fix is coming, say Google's release notes.

Google's Internet Explorer booster add-on, Chrome Frame, has also several repairs. Chrome Frame now uses IE's default pop-up blocker, and clicking one link with both mouse buttons will no longer crash the browser. Note that Chrome Frame is still considered experimental, and isn't recommended for casual use.

Google's assault on Microsoft's enterprise software business continues to advance with a new tool that helps companies move away from Exchange.

The Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool will launch later today, designed to give Exchange administrators help in moving their users' data into Google Apps. It's all part of Google's pitch for the benefits of cloud computing, which might sound nice to some administrators in theory but can require a lot of work.

Administrators can now download the tool from Google and move 200 users per hour from Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 to Google Apps, including e-mail, contact, and calendar data, said Chris Vander May, senior product manager for Google Apps. It will be available for Google Apps Premier Edition customers as well as Google Apps for Education customers.

Just as Microsoft is throwing resources into Bing and Internet search in hopes of denting Google's enormous market share, Google is trying to do the same thing to Microsoft's huge advantage in office productivity software. Over 25 million users are on Google Apps, according to the company, which sounds like a lot but is a fraction of the businesses still using Microsoft products.

Last year Google released a similar tool for letting administrators enable Google Apps but allowing their users to keep their Outlook clients.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview release on Tuesday sent a strong message to Web programmers that a host of standards will become safer to use. But in the case of one standard, Web video, Microsoft arguably pushed one controversial impasse deeper into gridlock.

The standard in question involves Web video that doesn't require a plug-in such as Adobe Systems' Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight. It's one of the big elements of HTML5--the Hypertext Markup Language standard now under development and aiming to expand the abilities of Web pages and Web applications.

The rough version of IE9 that Microsoft demonstrated includes HTML5 video encoded with a particular technology called H.264. Apple's Safari also supports this encoding and decoding technology, or codec.

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But Mozilla is adamantly opposed to open-source-unfriendly H.264, supporting the rival Ogg Theora codec instead, and Opera is in that camp with its new version 10.5. Google's Chrome supports both, tying the score at Ogg Theora 3, H.264 3.

It's no surprise Microsoft signed up for H.264. It owns many of the patents in the technology, which is licensed on behalf of Microsoft and several other patent holders by a group called the MPEG LA. And Microsoft of course isn't afraid of proprietary technology. H.264 support is included in Windows 7. Finally, H.264 by most accounts provides superior quality than Ogg Theora.

It's not inconceivable Microsoft could add Ogg Theora support in the future, but for now at least, Microsoft did little to break the logjam. That means Web sites with video will either have to include two streams for different browsers or--and this is more likely in the near term--continue to use Flash. (Much Flash video, by the way, uses the H.264 codec.)

The HTML5 standard describes how to build video into Web pages but, because of the disagreement among the major browser makers, leaves the codec unspecified. One wild card in the situation is what will happen now that Google has completed its acquisition of On2 Technologies, the company whose earlier VP3 codec underlies Ogg Theora and that was working on a newer codec called VP8. Google said regarding the acquisition that "video compression technology should be a part of the Web platform."

The preview version of IE9 also didn't lend Microsoft's clout to a number of other developing standards: WebGL, which is designed to bring hardware-accelerated video to the Web; Canvas, which makes it easier to construct two-dimensional graphics such as bar charts on Web pages; and Indexed DB, which is designed to enable Web applications to work even when there's no network connection.

Indexed DB support seems likely. Microsoft has endorsed the technology and over a rival called Web SQL, which along with a Mozilla's similar stance should help give Indexed DB a big boost in the HTML standardization process.

In an interview, though, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch wouldn't commit. Pointing to the "fun controversy there," he said, "We've got some of smartest peole engaged in a bunch of conversations between the principals right now."

He was cooler about WebGL, though, because adopting it will require Web developers to learn a new variety of programming.

"WebGL is yet another markup," Hachamovitch said. "How much do devs want that?"

Originally posted at Deep Tech

The contact manager service Xobni has gone mobile with an application and plug-in for BlackBerry smartphones.

Xobni Mobile, launched Wednesday, offers rich contact profiles in both a standalone application and within the native BlackBerry e-mail client. The product also uses a new service from the company, Xobni One, which links information between Microsoft Outlook and the mobile versions of Xobni.

Wednesday's move is the first time that Xobni has been available in any other form than a plug-in for Outlook, where it adds search, threading, and relevance functionality.

Read more of "Xobni Mobile launched for BlackBerry smartphones" at ZDNet UK.

Originally posted at Webware

A few months later than expected, Mozilla is calling it quits for version 3.0 of its Firefox browser.

"There will be no more updates for Firefox 3.0.x," Mozilla said Tuesday in a meeting planning document. The last update will be Firefox 3.0.19, due March 30, according to the Mozilla Wiki page. Mozilla started building the new version after some last-minute security fixes over the weekend.

Mozilla had planned to discontinue support for Firefox 3.0 in January, but the browser got a lifespan extension after Firefox 3.6 arrived later than planned.

The move reflects a gradual shift toward upgrading browsers more frequently, not just to keep up with new features, but also to free up resources otherwise spent on testing and maintaining older browsers and to reduce security risks associated with them. Google is even more aggressive: its Chrome browser updates automatically in the background by default, and it calls new releases "milestones" to be passed rather than version numbers to be attained.

Microsoft issues frequent patches to its browsers but sees things differently when it comes to longer-term issues. It still maintains support for Internet Explorer 6, introduced in 2001. "We are excited for people to move on. We want people to move on," IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in an interview this week for the IE9 Platform Preview launch, but meanwhile, providing security updates is the "responsible" thing to do.

Browsers are a fast-moving, increasingly important, technology and are central to the shift toward cloud computing. But there's a tension between organizations and people, for whom change can be a technical challenge or an expensive compatibility-breaking problem. Compatibility with standards can ease these transitions, but Web standards are in flux and aren't uniformly supported either with browsers or Web sites.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 with great fanfare in June 2008, and it's been patched as 3.0.18. Firefox 3.6 is the current supported version, and, of course, future work is under way. Mozilla has released two public alphas of its successor, which is called 3.7 for now though that's not necessarily the final name.

In the nearer term, Mozilla also preparing a Firefox 3.6 update called Lorentz. Mozilla had hoped for a beta release of Lorentz. But its chief feature--the out-of-process plug-ins (OOPP) design aimed to reduce crashes by putting Flash Player and its like into a separate memory compartment--is proving thorny. In addition, Mozilla programmers have only just begun the OOPP work for Mac OS X.

Originally posted at Deep Tech