Last week Walt Mossberg reviewed Xobni, a plugin for Microsoft Outlook. The review was mostly positive so I thought I would give it a try. Wow! If you use Outlook this tool is a must-have. Once installed, the Xobni dashboard pops up right inside Outlook (as an additional vertical panel). When you click on an email, you can see the history of emails with that person and a list of attachments sent or received. You also get the person’s phone number (from your Outlook addresses or the Web). When I click on the daily update emails I receive from the Wall Street Journal, I also get the 800# to the Journal and the general email address (access@interactive.wsj.com).

There are many more features, but the bottom line is that Xobni makes your email much more functional and easier to navigate. And so much easier to search! How did I ever live without it?

You or your company may have implemented blogs, podcasts, wikis, and other new media. Or, maybe you haven’t yet. Either way, employees across your company are getting involved with Web 2.0 — somewhere. They’re on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn. They’re commenting or reading comments on Shopper.com, Yelp, or Amazon. It’s also fairly likely some of your employees log on to industry forums to ask questions or offer answers.

Whether or not your company is actively implementing new media, it’s important to have a set of guidelines that helps employees understand the rules when they speak online as an employee. Several companies including IBM, Sun, and the BBC post their social media guidelines. You can review these to get some ideas.

Here are several items I like to include. The focus is on responsible participation. Don’t forget to run the guidelines you produce through legal review before you post them.

1. Don’t be anonymous. Always identify who you are and what company you work for.

2. Only designated employees speak “on behalf” of the company. Everyone else speaks for themselves.

3. Be personal (share a little about yourself), but protect your privacy.

4. Respect others. (Need I say more?)

5. Consider the content carefully. It will be on the Web and in search results for a long, long time.

6. Respect copyright, trademark, and fair use laws (use links instead of excerpts, always give attribution).

7. Protect confidential and financial information (for your company and every other company)

8. The company’s Employee Rules of Conduct (or similar employee guide) applies online.

9. Become part of the industry conversation, link to other’s, and have fun.

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. So busy. I presented at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston last week. They put on some event. Spared no expense. Rock band. Ballmer. 7,500 partners. Impressive.

When I present at big events, I get all geared up to make a good impression, do a great job. Possibly interest new consulting clients. That’s all well and good. But I’m finding it’s those little moments, boarding an airplane, sitting down next to someone at lunch, where I often make the best connections. And I’ve built some long-lasting relationships in those little moments.

I used to travel 150,000-200,000 miles a year and while waiting in the airport and sitting on a plane, I would bury my face in the dozens of trade publications, reports, and books I needed to read. I didn’t like being interrupted.  All those missed opportunities. Gone for good.

The new online “market me” tool VisualCV is addicting. I keep adding and tweaking. It’s just fantastic. I’ve added the VisualCV badge at the top of my blog sidebar (and copied it below for easy clicking). Take a look. Give me feedback. Start one of your own!

Guy wrote a post pointing to other examples. See here.

Use it as your online resume, a marketing tool for your consulting service, an announcement for an event, or well, anything you can think of.

The WSJ ran a story today on LoudounExtra.com, a local news website owned by The Washington Post Company covering Loudoun County, Virginia and its 270,000 residents. The site offers hyper-local news, events, and commentary and employs a great deal of new media (blogs, feeds, video, etc.). In fact, it’s exactly what you would expect to be a huge success, but apparently traffic has been abysmal. Russell Adam’s story attempts to dissect the problems.

However, the problem isn’t the people who built the site, or their knowledge of the community. The problem is simple. You can’t just build a site and hope people come. Sure that works sometimes, but that can’t be your marketing plan. LoudonExtra.com is a great site and I think a few marketing ideas might get it going.

1. Do a better job pulling people at real-world events to the site and people on the site to real-world events. You have to be in the community creating buzz, handing out t-shirts (think more like a radio station).

2. Turn your staff writers into personalities. Make sure they blog, quickly return comments from readers, and make themselves visible at local events (think Anderson Cooper/CNN). And post prominent pictures of them on the site. And while you’re at it, do the same thing for local bloggers.

3. Build a little more community into the site so that readers can talk to each other and build databases of information that are valuable to everyone else (comments on local services, local politics, fun for kids). Then run a promotion targeted solely to getting lots of people registered, reading the site, and commenting. American Airlines is currently running a Beijing promotion designed to create community. You can enter to win a free trip if you register on their site and post a travel tip (and every post is an additional contest entry). Good idea.

4. Set up a loyalty program where visitors can earn points towards small gifts (tickets to shows, free restaurant meals, etc.) if they bring others to the site, comment on blogs, or post tips. Make it a little more fun and interactive on the site.

5. Add more video and more pictures. Let people upload their videos and pictures of local events. Let them vote about what they think is the most important or interesting news or pictures.

6. Make it about the PEOPLE not just the events. Hyper-local actually means hyper-personal. Everyone in the community wants to see their name, picture, event or company highlighted. Make it so that people come to the site just to see if they made it in the news because they attended the event or blogged about it or sent in a video clip!