People ask us all the time, 'Do you have frog legs?'

And we always answered, 'No, we just walk that way.'
Well, no more. Not since Gil entered our lives. Gil's the company pet. Wendy got her from from the Grow-a-Frog company. The frog growing kit had been sitting in my garage for about 10 years and it was an easy last-minute idea for our secret santa gift exchange here at Plaxo. I was a little embarrassed, thinking people might not like it, or that maybe the company had gone out of business. But Wendy sent in the paperwork and got herself a mail order frog.

Naming her was a group project. The suggestions? Red. Ole Blue Eyes. Spermatazoa--Zoe for short. And Pierre--you know, because she's French. Wendy suggested Gil and it just fit.

Gil has brought much joy to the Quality Assurance department at Plaxo. We've watched as she's transformed from a small pollywog to a kidney-bean-sized amphibian. Over the days we've watched her grow legs (first back, then front) and lose her tail. Gil's a happy frog. (Why? She eats whatever bugs her.) Gil's always telling us frog jokes like that. Here's our favorite:

A man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, 'If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess.' He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, 'If you kiss me and turn me back in to a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero.' The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, 'If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will be your loving companion for an entire week.' The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to his pocket.

The frog then cried out, 'If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want.' Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

Finally, the frog asked, 'What's the matter? I told you I'm a beautiful princess and that I'll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?'

The man said, 'Look, I'm a programmer. I don't have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog? Now, that's cool!'

I guess you had to be there.

-- Michael Rowley
Creative Director, Plaxo

Just in time for Chinese New Year, we've updated our eCard site as follows:

- we've added new Chinese New Year eCard designs for 2007, the year of the pig.
- we've added Chinese font support! Now your eCards can say "恭喜發財" (gung hay fat choy), "恭喜发财" (gong xi fa cai), or let your Chinese creativity run wild! Just pick Simplified or Traditional Chinese from the font menu when customizing your card:

Here's an example of a card with a Chinese message:

Happy Year of the Pig!
- Hong, PM of Chinese New Year festivities

Joining a web 2.0 start-up to lead its Globalization effort was an eye opener for me in many ways. It required a bit of work-style adjustment on my part: from a no-walls environment where we may be visited at any time by one of our mascot dogs, to doing some coding myself, to the sound of a foosball game, to a more informal development process than I was used to (oops, did I use the p word?), to a do-it-yourself, hands-on attitude on just about everything.

But nowhere was the difference more noticeable than in the budget. At a small company every single dollar counts, and I knew right away that I would have to adopt a leaner and meaner approach to managing the internationalization and localization of our next generation product. That's where Skype came in.

Skype had been part of my life for a while already. I use it to communicate with family and friends in the UK, Brazil, France and Japan. Now I've put it to use at Plaxo, eliminating one of the most obvious costs in globalization: communication with partners, localizers, testers and power users of our product who live half a world away.

I simply ask people if they Skype. If they don't, I suggest they install it and recommend an inexpensive headpiece set. That way I can talk with any of my international associates for as long as needed. We use it to discuss bugs, test a feature real-time in different locales to gauge its implications for non-US users, or make sure localization instructions are well understood.

SkypingAround has become such an integral part of my day that I can no longer justify using the phone -- not even with one of the VoIP plans -- for any business related long distance calls. If other globalization managers are not following this model they should. It's one more budget line item they can eliminate.

By the way, stay tuned for the all new localized Plaxo, coming to you soon!

-- Regina Bustamante
Director, Globalization

Okay, so sometimes, despite our best intentions, we manage to forget to buy a present or order flowers to be delivered to that special someone for this, the big day, Valentine's...

Well, it's late in the afternoon on the West Coast, but it's still not too late to send a high-quality Valentine's ecard.

Okay, stop reading this. Get going. Get yourself out of the dog house...

A group of us from Plaxo found out last night when our own Glenn "Fiddich" Dixon from HipCal competed in the Guitar Hero tournament hosted by Meebo. His challenge was formiddable: if he lost in the first round, he would suffer embarassment; if he won the entire tournament, he would be embarassed for a different reason. His goal was thus a solid middle-of-the-pack performance, and that is exactly what he delivered.

The tournament drew quite a crowd.

Glenn (left) plays his heart out.

In his opening performance he won convincingly over his opponent on the song "Cherry Pie". Of the 16 competitors, he clearly showed a talent level that put him near the top. His second round song choice was "Can't You Hear Me Knocking?" and his opponent was one of the favorites to win the tournament. It was a seesaw matchup and ultimately Glenn suffered a narrow and nobel defeat. The contestants that made it to the final round were indeed masters of their game, and we were humbled by their performance.

All in all it was a fun night, and it was particularly nice to see so many Plaxites come and show their support for our guy!

With the recent release of Office 2007 and Windows Vista from Microsoft, some of our users have been wondering - how can I get a version of the Plaxo Outlook/OE toolbar that supports these platforms?

Well, we are pleased to announce the availability of a beta version of our newest version of the Outlook/OE toolbar which now supports the newest Office and Windows.

If you would like to try out this version, you can download it from http://down.plaxo.com/down/release-2.13.0.8/PlaxoInstallNT.exe. Note that this is still a BETA version and we have not yet completed testing. We would also like to ask that only users of Outlook 2007 try this version at this time.

For feedback or support on this version, please e-mail support here at Plaxo. Thanks!