Since I live in downtown Palo Alto, I thought I should stroll over to the Apple store after dinner to check out the scene. Robert Scoble, whom I recently met while we were launching the all-new Plaxo, had let everyone know that he was going to be there, waiting in line and covering the event.

So, wearing my new "Yeah, I'd sync that" t-shirt, I headed over, stopping first at the 7-11 to buy a bag of popcorn as my offering to Scoble and team, in case they were in need of munchies.

We're excited about the iPhone, just like everyone else, but also because we are eager to see how Plaxo 3.0 can act as the bridge that syncs it with Outlook, Google, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and more.

Here are some of the pics I shot at the scene:

And if you like these photos and would like to see more of my stuff,add me to your Pulse feeds by putting me in your address book. My e-mail address is john at plaxo dot com. That will also make it easier for you to give me direct feedback on products or to ask me questions.

Maybe I'll check out the Apple store line in the morning as I head into the office...

The all-new Plaxo has been in public beta less than 24 hours, and the reponse has been amazing. Even overwhelming. (Sorry to those who have experienced some seriously slow performance, particularly in the morning surge of traffic. We just added a bunch of API servers, so performance should be better now. And to those who may have encountered a sync bug, sorry, too. Feel free to ping me at john at plaxo.com.)

The unveiling of Plaxo 3.0 began last evening at 9:00 Pacific (midnight on the East Coast). The first (and some of the most in-depth) early coverage came from the blogosphere -- specifically from Robert Scoble, who had come to visit us last week to record some video interviews. Scobleizer deserves credit for really breaking the story.

A wide variety of prominent media outlets added their voices to the chorus, including the Wall Street Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, Reuters, GigaOm, TechCrunch, Mashable, Stowe Boyd, ZD Net, InformationWeek, ComputerWorld, Web Worker Daily, Wired, the Register, and more.

It's been great to see the reaction after all the months of hard work. But we also know there's a lot of work ahead of us. Bugs to fix. Critical features to add. Continued investment in performance and scaling. Oh yes, and we know, everybody wants us to get Gmail Contacts syncing! (We're working on it with folks at Google. Stay tuned.)

About a year ago we announced a big change in direction for Plaxo, and since then have been hard at work, quietly rebuilding the Plaxo service. But now, it’s finally here -- a day that we’ve been looking forward to for a long time – the launch of an all-new version of the service, Plaxo 3.0. It’s been in private beta for a few weeks, but today we’re opening the doors to everyone at beta.plaxo.com. (Here are links to the official press release and screenshots.)

There’s a lot that’s new in Plaxo 3.0, but the biggest news is that we tackled the really hard problem of sync across an unprecedented breadth of apps and services. We’re now doing automated multi-way sync between:

- Google (starting with Calendar, with Gmail coming soon)
- Microsoft (Outlook, Outlook Express, Vista Mail, and Hotmail)
- Yahoo! (Mail and Calendar)
- Mac OSX Sync Services (for Address Book, iCal, and iPhone)
- AOL (AIM and Classic AOL)
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Mobile phones
- LinkedIn

Our new sync platform sync was built using SyncML, an open standard, which means that we’re making it easy for other companies to plug into Plaxo and have the benefit of sync in their own apps. We’ll detail this more on the blog later, but the basic idea is you should be seeing a lot more places to connect with Plaxo in the coming months.

There’s also an entirely new version of plaxo.com, a multi-component “smart address book” web app (an ambitious AJAX app built with Dojo), with tabs for contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, and more. At the bottom, there’s a “sync dashboard,” for easy set-up, monitoring, and management of all your sync endpoints:

The revamped address book component makes getting to your data (and doing something with it) much faster. There’s find-as-you-type search, click-to-call phone numbers (via a mashup with Jajah), plus maps and one-click driving directions (via mashup with Yahoo!):

There’s a fresh spin on online calendaring, some of the fruit from our acquisition last year of the HipCal team. The new calendar features the “Upcoming” view, with gives you instant access to upcoming events today and tomorrow, the weather (via mashup with Weather Underground), “Countdowns” to major events, and embedded photos (via mashup with Flickr):

And there’s one totally new feature that builds on our original vision of keeping you connected to the people you know, but takes it to the next level. It’s called Pulse, and it “brings life to your address book.” Here’s the idea: people you know are creating great online content every day, but discovering it is difficult, and staying on top of it is even harder. Plaxo Pulse takes the effort and complexity out of the process by automating the sharing of feeds, starting with Flickr photos, blogposts, and Amazon Wish Lists, Plaxo contact info, and more on the way.

All of this is now available in simultaneously in English and French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. And it's now avilable for free on your mobile phone a http://m.plaxo.com.

As you can probably tell, we're very excited about this release -- and in many ways it represents not just a new version of the Plaxo service, but the launch of an all-new Plaxo, the company.

There’s been an interesting story making the rounds of the blogosphere this weekend, claiming that Plaxo is about to be acquired by Xing for $250M. The gist of the story is that this is part of Xing’s efforts to enter the US market, where Xing faces stiff competition from LinkedIn. The rumor first appeared in Techcrunch, and was soon picked up by CNET and GigaOM.

Of course, denying rumors usually just fans the flames of speculation—but for what it’s worth, this one isn’t true. Plaxo isn’t currently “in play.” We’re heads-down, working on an all-new Plaxo, as well as delivering on our partnerships, such as the one that we recently announced with Comcast.

It’s fun to try to figure out where these rumors come from. At various points in time over the past several months, I have had lunch with Lars Hinrichs (CEO of Xing) and with Reid Hoffman (Chairman of LinkedIn). But, we did not talk about acquisition. And, my lunch on Friday was one of the 3-for-a-dollar ramen soups we stock in the Plaxo snack room. ;^)

Ben Golub
CEO