Great Opportunity for Technical Writers! by ashishiyogi

50 articles in 7 days at 450-500 word each Excellent English, with proper grammar, structure and punctuation usage The articles will be on technology, computers, technical terms and technology product reviews etc… (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Academic Writing, Articles, Copywriting, Product Descriptions, Technical Writing)

***PPC PRO NEEDED ** NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS ONLY** by Jefftd77

Hello, Only experienced NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS with PPC experience and great feedback will be considered. I set up my clients (Realtors) with 3 landing pages (2 to target Buyers and 1 to Sellers) and they will use them with PPC and Google Analytics to get and track leads for their business… (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Google Adsense, Leads, Marketing, SEM / Adwords, SEO)

URGENTLY required an excellent writer by farhazeen

Hello, I urgently need a writer to write 5 different articles each containing 450 words within 4 hours from now. Time is very crucial. If you cannot adhere to the deadline given, kindly do not bid. I have had people bid and after a long period of time tell me they couldn’t do it… (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Article Rewriting, Articles, Research)

Top 42 Creative Flash Site Templates

Unless you’re Steve Jobs, chances are you will find time in your day to enjoy the benefits of Flash! After all it’s a great dynamic format for showcasing creative work, and certainly one that we, at Envato, support and will continue to support for years to come! Today across Tuts+ we’re showcasing the fine work our authors are selling on our marketplaces and for your discerning tastes we’ve put together a list of forty-two of the most creative Flash site templates from ActiveDen, some of which are so good they might even tempt ol’ Steve!

MD PortfolioSite v2

This template is ideal for photographers wanting to show multiple portfolios. Complete with a php contact form and an XML -driven portfolio which you can now navigate using your arrow keys, the template is a great upgrade from the first version! Still easy to configure and with a number of code optimizations (including more robust error handling and file download management).

MD Gallery Advanced

A simple yet elegant gallery site to showcase your work in a compelling manner. MD Gallery Advanced was designed with the goal to let your work speak for itself. The thumbnails are arranged in an elegant (and customizable) grid and allow each thumbnail to display a larger version of your image for more impact. The motion is smooth and you can add as many image and video “libraries” as you wish (space permitting of course).

Ultimate Creative Template

This template is designed from the ground up to be easy to update, customize and understand. Each section has its own external xml config file so you can access over 300 options without opening Flash!

XML Portfolio Template V3

Latest version from abenson. This version has a great deal of upgrades and added features. XML Portfolio Template v3 is a full Flash website completely managed by XML files that use modules to control content.

Designer’s Portfolio

Designer’s portfolio features a unique fullscreen xml website template with great motion, a clean design and deeplinking support. This template comes with over 65 predefined settings in config.xml, total freedom in the setup of your pages and a user manual counting 40 pages.

Full XML Website V3

Full XML Website V3” is an application that enables anyone to create a flash website without much knowledge of flash programming.

Elite Xml Website

The ELITE Template allows you to define some basic settings by default like the webpage standard color, the fullscreen mode option, inclusion of background(s), among others. It also allows you to define all the links, contents and modules you wish it to have. Easy to manage, you can replace the existing logos by your owns using basic xml.

Full XML Template

This package comes with everything that you need in order to build yourself a great portfolio or site or whatever.

Creative Portfolio Template

A nice template fully animated using AS2 . All text/images/videos are editable via xml.

XML Clean White Portfolio Template

This template was designed with the idea in mind to produce something clean and simple, spiced up with powerful and vibrant images to get your idea across.

Fullscreen Flash Advanced

A Fullscreen Flash file by Richardson, features content that centres with a ease and resizable scrollbar and works in all browsers.

Slick Full Website Template with CMS and 2 Skins

A complete solution that is modular, easy to implement, modify and administrate.

Elegant Photography Template

A simple and elegant template to showcase your portfolio. Features support for images and flv files and includes source files, font and help documentation.

Multimask Portfolio Reloaded

Multimask Portfolio is a stylish horizontal portfolio that enables to present you and your works in a smart and original way. New features have been added and new 7 modules.

Multi-Photo Gallery (xml based)

This is a XML driven Multi category Photo Gallery, with a nice ease left & right scroll effect.

mySlideShowSitePro (V2)

A simple, slick & professional looking XML based slide show site.

Green Star Template

A web site template without any use of XML data. It is all done with tweening and a bit of ActionScript. Note that it is only 151kb in size. All the images and text are changed easily.

ll XML Website V2

Full XML Website V2 is an application that enables anyone to create a flash website without much knowledge of flash programming. This is one of the first products we are publishing and soon we will have more applications of this kind.

Cool Urban / Street template

It’s very easy to be modified, just change the coordinates inside AS of menu’s button. This template use mc_tween2.as that is a component (mc_tween_2_28_29.mxp) that you have to install before editing fla’s file.

Ultimate Portfolio Template with Admin and 2 Skin

With all the included modules, the two different skins, deep linking and most of all the included Advanced PHP Content Management System (admin) this is amazing value for money, don’t miss out.

Photography Suite CMS Deeplinking Template

This template is the ultimate solution for creating, editing and launching your website in Adobe Flash even if you do not know anything about the actionscript language, and you do not have a copy of the software.

Minimal Website + Image Slide

A minimal Website with a great image viewer in the main movie. This website include, the main fla, an example of section, all the prototypes files you need, an HTML page with Flash Detection and fullinstaller of flash plugin in case of need.

Wildwise Ultimate Creative Portfolio v1

The content of this portfolio is completely and easily customizable and editable via XML files

One Page Portfolio Pro XML Website Template AS3

One page portfolios are an increasingly popular way of displaying the work of creative professionals. They represent a straight to the point approach for presenting personal work, requiring little effort from the viewer, which translates into longer times spent on the site and more of your work reaching more of your visitors.

Portfolio Website [modular]

Full XML website – this is a template that supports modules.

RetroStyle

This a retro-looking presentation with a nice “zoom-in-and-move-on” effect. I made this one for a friend of mine and he accepted the other version i made for him. Just wanted to know what you think about it. All objects are vectors making it easy for you to play around with them.

Multimedia Database Template

A nice template with SWF Address support, created in such a way to always have an overview of the portfolio. You can personalize all the data via xml.

Smooth Portfolio

A very smooth and clean animated Horizontal Portfolio with Externally loaded About us text and a PHP based Contact form.

Flash Creative Pro Template

Includes a 27 page illustrated pdf help manual, with detailed step by step instructions, and screen grabs of the timeline and code so you can quickly and efficiently get your website up and running.

Creative Studios Portfolio

It is a complete xml supported website for individuals, creative studios etc. for presenting portfolios in a nice and professional way.

XML Photo / Design Gallery 1.0

This is a fully XML driven template created to show off photography or design work. Everything from the menu system, to the title, to all the images is all completely XML driven. This website can be completely customized without even owning flash.

Colour Sliding Website

This snazzy little number is perfect for a portfolio website. It looks and performs well.

XML_Creative_Portfolio

This is a FULL FLASH XML site greate for portfolio viewer, easy XML manage of showing pictures.

MD PortfolioSite

This feature-packed site template is ideal for photographers wanting to show a concise (up to 20) portfolio of their work. Complete with a php contact form and an XML -driven portfolio, the template is easy to configure and even easier to deploy!

Premium Flash Template

The Premium Flash Template is a fully configurable and easy to use web template with a lot of great features. You can create attractive functional pages just with a few mouse clicks. The Premium Flash Template supports deep linking, which means that you can link to any specific part of the website. Deep linking also lets you use the browser’s back and forward buttons.

Portfolio Website

A clean, simple design to let your artwork do the talking. All images and text are updated using xml files. No flash required!

This is an template where you can drag the content around to get a free feeling, it is easy and fast to use.
It is fully xml driven, you can change it fast and get as soon as posible your site online.

Premium Photography and Portfolio Website

The Premium Photography and Portfolio Website is a fully configurable and easy to use web template with a lot of great features. You can create a professional looking website just with a few mouse clicks. You don’t need to know Flash or ActionScript to use the Premium Photography and Portfolio Website

Vertical Portfolio (by quickyboy)

Take a look at this one! Simple, classic, clean, easy to navigate, XML driven, AS2 , in a word: a perfect Vertical Portfolio Template.

Ry-Guy Gallery

Simple gallery page with vertical thumbnail panel. Users can adjust the color of the text, background, and side panel.

Horizontal Creative Portfolio

This is a fully XML driven horizontal portfolio website, which you could readily use with little knowledge in Flash. What you need to do is change some parameters (mentioned in the help file) and you are done with your website.

Black & White Deeplinking Template

The Black & White template is a fullscreen xml Flash template with deeplinking. Deeplinking enables you to target specific sections of your website, send links via email or instant messenger, find specific content with the major search engines, Utilize browser history, reload buttons and bookmark in a browser.

3D Product Gallery

This is my product/photo viewer with 3D navigation driven by XML . You can add any number of photos/products with all parameters costumizable by xml: Thumbs, big photo, descriptions, links, price, caption, etc…

Got something to sell? Become an Author!

Authors on the Envato Marketplaces earn literally thousands of dollars a month. The absolute highest selling author makes over $25,000 every month. Of course he’s got more talent in his left thumb than most of us can dream of, but even so regular authors can still earn a good income on the side. Best of all it just keeps trickling in, no matter what you are doing, no matter where you are. So if you think you have the skills and know-how to make files like the ones showcased here, head over and become an author!

Top 20 Essential Skies, Textures and Shaders

Over on our sister site 3DOcean, we’ve been noticing a bit of a trend. It seems 3D authors are always in need of stuff to make their models look awesome. Whether it’s textures, shaders or our most popular category, skies, these items are always in demand. This week across the Tuts+ network we’re showcasing great products from our marketplaces and our brilliant community of authors. So without further ado, here are a whole bunch of useful premium digital goods for you to throw money at!

1. Textures

In addition to our specialized CG Textures category on 3DOcean, don’t forget we also have even more textures over on GraphicRiver’s Textures category. Here are 5 of the best from 3DOcean.

Grass Lawn Hi-Res Texture

A large scale hi-res grass texture, created using 16 separate 12 megapixel photographs and carefully edited for perfect tiling. And you can add a highly realistic grass surface using the accompanying bump and specular maps!

Asphalt Road Texture

A perfectly tileable, high quality asphalt texture so you can get your roads rocking! Comes in 512×512 pixels, JPG and PSD formats.

Wood Texture

High Quality wood texture, perfectly tileable, 1024×1024 pixels.

Portuguese Sidewalk Texture

A texture from the typical Portuguese sidewalk. Perfectly tileable with high resolution (2048×2048).

Ground Cover

This large scale hi-res ground cover texture has been created using 10 separate 12 megapixel photographs, which have been carefully edited and combined into a single perfectly tiling, 100% seamless image.

2. Skies

Thanks to talented 3D artist Peter Guthrie the HDR Images category on 3DOcean has been super popular, and for good reason! Next time you are rendering an outdoor scene, be sure to grab one of these HDRi skies to finish it off.

HDRi – 2118 Moon

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 2118 refers to the time of day it was taken.

HDRi – 0707 Dawn Sun

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 0707 refers to the time of day it was taken.

HDRi – 0743 Cloudy Morning Sun

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 0743 refers to the time of day it was taken.

HDRi – 1222 Sun Clouds

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 1222 refers to the time of day it was taken.

HDRi – 1725 Sun Clouds

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 1725 refers to the time of day it was taken.

HDRi – 1928 Dusk Sun

HDRi skydome panorama in .exr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. 1928 refers to the time of day it was taken.

PureLIGHT HDRi 001 – Mid Sun Clouds

PureLIGHT HDRi skydome panorama in .hdr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. This is skydome was virtually rendered to have a very high dynamic range for great looking realistic shadows from the sun!

PureLIGHT HDRi 007 – Low Sun Clouds

PureLIGHT HDRi skydome panorama in .hdr format for use as a spherical environment in 3d scenes. This is skydome was virtually rendered to have a very high dynamic range for great looking realistic shadows from the sun!

3. Materials and Shaders

And to finish off our roundup, we’ve got a selection of some great materials and shaders!

24 Metal Shaders for CINEMA 4D

This pack 24 realistic Metal Shaders for MAXON CINEMA 4D , including 8 types of metal.

Plywood Sheets

Five 2440×1220mm plywood sheets. High resolution diffuse and reflection bitmaps at 4000×2000 pixels.

Car Paint

This pack 24 realistic Metal Shaders for MAXON CINEMA 4D , including 8 types of metal

Glass Material

This pack 24 realistic Metal Shaders for MAXON CINEMA 4D , including 8 types of metal

Human Skin

This Human Skin Shaders Pack For CINEMA4D (C4D) contains 8 human skin color shaders from pale to black. All shaders are made from multiple layers so they aren’t just a plain color shaders, but rather high detailed realistic shaders.

Office Furniture Wood Materials

WildeMedia has created 5 new materials for his office furniture set including the one used in the files. These work great with any office furniture sets.

Perforated Metal

A set of 5 Perforated Metal Textures that are easy to use in any 3D program. Simply apply the tileable texture to the opacity map slot.

Got something to sell? Become an Author!

Authors on the Envato Marketplaces earn literally thousands of dollars a month. The absolute highest selling author makes over $25,000 every month. Of course he’s got more talent in his left thumb than most of us can dream of, but even so regular authors can still earn a good income on the side. Best of all it just keeps trickling in, no matter what you are doing, no matter where you are. So if you think you have the skills and know-how to make files like the ones showcased here, head over and become an author!

20 WordPress Portfolio Themes for Photographers

These days it’s imperative for photographers to maintain an online portfolio to showcase your work. This used to be quite difficult to do, but thanks to the magic of WordPress has gotten a whole lot easier. Setting up WordPress just requires a suitable web host, a bit of web knowledge and a great Portfolio Theme. This week, we’re showing off some amazing files from our marketplaces, so I’ve put together some of the best WordPress themes for photographers from ThemeForest for your use!

Fotofolio

Fotofolio is a unique custom designed photography portfolio template created for photographers that require a high impact web presence but can be used for any type of artist’s portfolio ( webdesigner, graphic artist, painter etc).

Photoworks

Photoworks is a modern web 2.0 style html template for photography or portfolio website. The color of this theme is black/dark.

Sanfolio

Sanfolio – A Simple and Clean Template photographer’s to show case there portfolio.

ISO Photography Portfolio

ISO is a complete, modern looking portfolio theme designed for photographers to showcase their galleries online, while providing all the details your customers need to get to know you and your work.

Studio Ansel Theme

Studio Ansel is a premium WordPress theme for photographers and artists. It prominently displays images in a large, jQuery slideshow – focusing on the images instead of text. This theme is perfect for photoblogs, portfolio sites, and other creative arts.

Minimo – A minimal one page portfolio theme

A simple and attractive one page portfolio showcase theme.

Photo Nexus WordPress gallery

This theme is great for those who need a convenient way to publish and showcase a self managed Gallery of Photos, Artworks or Designs.

Gallerific – Photography WordPress Theme

This WordPress theme is really two themes in one, Dark and Light. Featuring fully layered and detailed PSDs and logo template PSDs to easily create your logo graphic.

Gateway Studios for WordPress

Gateway Studios, Simplicity Overhaul features a simple yet beautiful design, that will impress your visitors with its delicate form. The theme comes with many great features that just work out of the box, without the need for plugins, making Gateway a very smart decision with everything Integrated.

W-PhotoStudio

WordPress as CMS for Photostudios, Photographers or anyone who’d like to showcase his photo albums/gallery sets.

Magnifolio – The Gallery/Blog WordPress Theme

WordPress theme with over 30 custom options and settings, including color changes, drag & drop navigation and slider setup, and two category styles (Blog and Gallery)

Centizero (WordPress Edition)

This theme has some really awesome features such as a cool slider for you’re featured work and a theme admin panel where you can add your services, contact widget, front page items, slogans for different sections and portfolio editing.

Synthetik WordPress Theme

Synthetik is a theme for WordPress. The theme design was developed for users who appreciate visual browsing and a minimal layout. The theme can been used to create everything from e-commerce sites, portfolio sites, and everything in between.

Synergy Premium Portfolio and Blog

Synergy is a powerful yet easy to use Premium WordPress theme for business or personal use. It can showcase products, services, or anything you like. The front page slideshow comes in 3 styles. The blog is fully featured with everything one would expect and a lot more.

WordPress HUD

WordPress HUD let’s you choose the exact colors or patterns you want! Also, free updates for life!

Flex for WordPress – A Portfolio & Blog Theme

Flex is a premium WordPress portfolio theme that’s designed specifically for photographers, designers, motion artists, and all creatives to display their work in a slick, grid-based interface.

Bitwork

Bitwork is clean web 2.0 style wordpress theme suitable for portfolio and business company sites. There are five color version for this template (reb, blue, orange, blue, silver).

Morpheus

Morpheus is a beautiful and fun solution for portfolios, designers, photographers, business sites, and anyone needing a quick and easy solution to get a beautiful website at a minimal cost. Although Morpheus is intended to be for the designer or small business, Morpheus can also work as a simple and clean blog theme as well.

Revoltz – Premium WordPress Theme

Revoltz features a Top of the Line WordPress Framework, created from scratch to be fast and reliable even for big sites. The theme comes bundled with lots of useful features that will make your life a whole lot easier when publishing your content.

Creative Zodiac – Portfolio & Blog

CreativeZodiac is mainly a Portfolio and Blog theme. It’s suitable for all creatives and bloggers out there, but I can also imagine it as a stylish virtual business card. The possibilities are endless, it all depends on your imagination and interest. Plus the whole theme is so simple and easy to use thanks to extensive theme options panel and custom write panels which makes everything quick and breeze!

Got something to sell? Become an Author!

Authors on the Envato Marketplaces earn literally thousands of dollars a month. The absolute highest selling author makes over $25,000 every month. Of course he’s got more talent in his left thumb than most of us can dream of, but even so regular authors can still earn a good income on the side. Best of all it just keeps trickling in, no matter what you are doing, no matter where you are. So if you think you have the skills and know-how to make files like the ones showcased here, or like the Isolated Photo Objects on GraphicRiver, head over and become an author!

Check.in Checks Out Of Closed Beta And Into Your HTML5-Compatible Device

Back in March, I wrote about the problem of check-in fatigue. That is, with so many location-based check-in services now out there, it’s exhausting to open each one every time to check-in to the same place across multiple networks. The solution, for now at least, is Check.in. And it’s ready to open to everyone tonight.

Check.in is an HTML5 web app made by Brightkite that allows you to check-in to a venue on multiple location-based services. Those services including Foursquare, Gowalla, and of course, Brightkite. This works by taking advantage of those services’ APIs alongside some backend place matching that Brightkite does on its end. The result is being able to check-in across multiple services in a few seconds rather than taking a few minutes to load up the various apps and hit the required buttons on each to check-in.

Since Check.in went live in closed beta in March, over 6,000 users have tried it out, generating some 135,000 check-ins, I’m told. The average user checked-in 20 times, and there were over 2 million place queries in the beta period.

That last statistic speaks to why we need some sort of unified Places database (this app just does place matching, not unification). Brightkite had indicated they’d be willing to do something like that, but the problem is the other companies who are all saying the right things now — but may not be so quick to hand over their databases with the places they’ve collected. It’s also an extremely hard problem to solve since not all the data is perfectly aligned (misspellings, slightly off GPS, etc).

The point is, even if everyone seems to say they want it, it’s not happening anytime soon. And so we have Check.in.

Since the closed beta began, Brightkite has also added two new services to the check-in roster: Whrrl and TriOut. Each of these is still experimental alongside Gowalla, which is currently on Check.in thanks to an API work-around (Gowalla has a read-only API at the moment).

Some other data that Brightkite saw during the beta trial was that people check-in most often on Friday, and least often on Sunday. And most users opt to use two of the check-in services, followed by those who choose to use three. Four and five were much less popular (though Whrrl and TriOut weren’t available the entire time), and one was somewhat popular — though I’m not sure what the point of using check.in is if you’re only going to use it with one service.

Since it’s HTML5, Check.in will work with iPhones, Android phones, and yes, the iPad. Just point your web browser here to find it.


Former Plaxo CEO Ben Golub Joins Gluster, An Open Source Storage Platform Startup

Back in March, long-time Plaxo President and CEO Ben Golub left the social address book company after five years. Today, he’s announcing his next move — he’s taking the reins at Gluster, a startup that offers an open source software solution for storing very large amounts of unstructured data. Golub will replace current CEO Hitesh Chellani who is transitioning to become VP of Operations.

Golub says that during his time at Plaxo he experienced the struggles web companies have to go through to serve large amounts of data to large numbers of customers, which often involved quickly adding large amounts of storage capacity. He says that along with other Web 2.0 companies, large media companies like Comcast, which acquired Plaxo, have to deal with similar problems. Gluster helps deal with these issues, allowing services to use commodity hardware to store large amounts of data while also making it quickly retrievable (Gluster’s software will also work on enterprise-grade storage area networks).  The software has been downloaded around 100,000 times.


Microsoft Sues Salesforce, Claims Infringement On Nine Patents

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Salesforce.com, alleging that the CRM company is infringing on nine of its patents. The move is somewhat surprising, as this is only the fourth time that Microsoft has sued another company for patent violations (though it has been the target of plenty of them). Here’s the statement from Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

“Microsoft has filed an action today, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, against Salesforce.com for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by their CRM product.

Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market. We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights.”

The relevant patent names are:

  • Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data
  • System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu
  • Method and System for staking toolbars in a computer display.
  • Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications
  • Aggregation of system settings into objects
  • Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information
  • Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer
  • System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network

According to Cnet, in January Salesforce revealed in an SEC filing that “a large technology company” was accusing Salesforce of infringing on its patents. At the time, Salesforce was in discussions with the unnamed company and no litigation had been filed. Sounds like those negotiations didn’t work out. Salesforce declined to comment.


Yandex Adds Foreign Content Filter To Search

Russian search engine Yandex is now allowing users to limit search to only foreign websites (non Russian sites). Now users can click on the global search filter (as shown in this screenshot) to see results from foreign sources. The global search is also available at the company’s experimental Yandex.com portal launched for testing new search algorithms.

Yandex has been indexing foreign websites and adding global content to its search results for the past two years and caters towards Russian users, obviously. But the feature will allow a users to filter results more accurately if they want an answer from a website outside of Russia.

So, the search query TechCrunch on yandex.ru returns a long list of websites in Russian; but with the global search filter enabled, the results lead to English sites. Currently, Yandex indexes more than 4 billion pages in Latin languages, with the majority of these pages being in English. Yandex’s search results page now has the option to view either local or foreign search results separately. By default, Yandex search prioritizes local websites as before.

Yandex says that user queries in one of the Latin-alphabet based languages total 12-15% of all searches on the search engine. Yandex also plans to expand its search index to deliver multimedia results and other useful answers.

Yandex, which launched in 1997, has been able to outrun Google in Russia. Yandex has an estimated domestic market share of 63.6% according to LiveInternet.ru, with Google trailing at 21.8% in April.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Xobni Puts Gmail Gadgets Into Outlook

Earlier today, Google announced a new Gmail API that allows developers to create contextual gadgets for Gmail. Google itself uses this API so that when somebody sends you a link to a YouTube video in an email, the video gets embedded right inside the email. Now outside developers can do the same thing to create Gmail gadgets that show the social networking activity or profiles of the person whose email you are reading, or anything else they can imagine. Xobni will be using the new contextual gadgets to finally bring Xobni to Gmail (they’ve already built a quick and dirty Hoover’s gadget for now).

But Xobni is doing something else that could prove even more interesting. It is releasing a developer preview which lets any developer port their Gmail gadgets to Outlook. Xobni, of course, is a popular Outlook plug-in. Using the Gmail API, and contextual gadget created for Gmail can now also exist within Xobni, which exists within Outlook. It’s a backdoor way for Web developers to create gadgets for Outlook by piggybacking on top of the Xobni plug-in.

The gadgets can be triggered off of any contextual information within the email. So, for instance, if there is a link to a Flickr album, the thumbnails can appear at the bottom of the email. Flight times can trigger travel info app, a UPS number can trigger a tracking app.