Just when I thought that the HipCal team's 5 minutes of fame had come to an end, I received a frantic call from my Mom this morning letting me know otherwise.

The Daily Ittefaq, a nationally published newspaper in Bangladesh, featured an article about the HipCal team. We’re not sure if this publicity for HipCal and Plaxo will cause Bangladesh to leap forward in Plaxo’s “Connected Index” or perhaps win the next “World Cup of Address Books”, but as a Bangladeshi native, this is truly an honor.

My Bangla is a little rusty, but it does seem to be a positive article; I’m still waiting for the translation to come in from Mom.

Time seems to go a lot faster after college ends. It’s been nearly six months here at Plaxo, and we’ve been hard at work building a brand new calendar (among other things). We’re all really excited and are counting down to the day when we can show it all to you.

If you've been getting this blog via our feed, you probably haven't noticed that we rolled out a new blog template. Our old template was prone to getting messed up when we tried to post large pictures and had a lot of chrome for a simple blog like ours, so we simplified!

Here's our old template:

And here's the new template:

Hope you guys like it; if you've got suggestions we'd love to hear them! Also if you find any strange rendering bugs, please let us know so we can take care of them. Thanks!

-- Mark Jen, Product Manager

It's not surprising much of the discussion we've heard about Plaxo has been around our recent HipCal acquisition. Blogger comments range from "exciting acquisition" to "stupid acquisition". Here are a few links to some of those discussions as well as other comments that mention Plaxo from the past couple of weeks.

• Plaxo
  A nice little write-up on Plaxo Basic and Plaxo Premium by a blogger.  It's worth mentioning the Plaxo Premium is available for a 30 day trial.

• Plaxo buys Hipcal
  More buzz about our HipCal acquisition.  This user sees the value of Plaxo and can't wait to see what becomes of greater calendar integration.

• TechCrunch Plaxo Acquires Calendar Startup HipCal
  People chime in on their thoughts about Plaxo's acquisition of HipCal.

• Tech Support Guy Forums
  Unfortunately, a user reports a problem with running Plaxo, but Todd comes to the rescue!

• Exporting Outlook Contacts Folders - Solution
  User discusses an interesting use for Plaxo to solve a problem with Outlook.

• Jargon Watch and Code Sludge
  User writes about his experience with the beta version of Plaxo for Mac.

• Plaxo: We'll Spam You Less!
  Brian Carnell's understanding of Plaxo may not be completely accurate, but his criticisms are understandable as a result of the 'acquaintance spam' problem. 

• FeedDemon 2 owner
  Stuart wants to be able to subscribe to his Plaxo calendar through iCal.  Our recent HipCal acquisition should help!

• plaxo_love++
  From someone we previously heard from, who now writes: "Plaxo does blogging right".  Aw shucks, Thanks!.

• disruptive companies: plaxo
  A recent interview with one of our Product Managers, Mark Jen who answers questions about Plaxo.

• Exporting Outlook Contacts Folders - Solution
  One user writes how Plaxo can be used as a solution for exporting Outlook Contact folders.

• Plaxo thinks e-cards offer competitive advantage
  One blogger comments that ecards are so 1997 and questions why we think they are compelling enough for people to upgrade to Plaxo Premium.

• Google should partner with Plaxo to sync with Outlook
  This user wants to see the new Google calendar synchronized with Outlook and suggests that Google partner with Plaxo to achieve this.

• Triton Thorns
  One user is not happy with AIM Triton and wonders what is Plaxo.

• Who Is Plaxo Buying?
  Om Malik was the first to break the "rumor" of Plaxo's acquisition a few days before it become public.

• The AJAX Acquisitions Are Underway
  Another post about our HipCal acquisition.

• To Whom It May Concern: Here's My Calendar
  Internetnew.com article on Plaxo acquisition of HipCal.

As always, we'd like to encourage people to share their thoughts, comments, and experience with Plaxo by blogging about it. We're listening and will use the feedback to improve the Plaxo service. Perhaps we'll highlight your blog here next time :-).

We love to read about people's experience with Plaxo... good or bad. Here are a couple of recent mentions of Plaxo in the blogosphere:

• What's Your Brand?
  Brief mention of Plaxo as a way to keep in touch with the people you meet throughout your career.

• Not Everyone Happy with Plaxo
  Reference to the recent Plaxo discussion on TechDirt.

• Is Plaxo on OSX any good? Or, indeed, any use?
  Skeptisicm on the benefits of Plaxo on the Mac. Includes responses from others who offer their own opinions on why they like Plaxo on the Mac.

• Today is a 48 hour day
  Always good to look up friends on "the plaxo".

• Brucie
  One member's observations on update requests and how it led to reconnecting with Brucie.

• Enhanced Controls for Member-to-Member Notifications
  Check out some new Plaxo features.

• Now for something technical...
  Ever wanted to know how we get those little icons into Outlook?

• Getting your site or service "Plaxo-Enabled"
  The benefits of being "Plaxo-Enabled".

• Social Networking Gets Annoying - OpenBC and Plaxo
  Another person who doesn't like to getting Update Request emails.

• WTF is Plaxo.com?
  I'm sure others have asked a similar question.

• We didn't do it
  An over-zealous user?

• Plaxo - nifty if sometimes annoying
  A new user writes about his experience with Plaxo.

• You know when you've been Plaxoed
  A member offers advice to others about learning from his mistakes.

• Plaxo for Mac OSX
  One user writes how Plaxo for the Mac was a wish come true for making it easier to back up the Mac address book.

• I need an address book
  Plaxo is "brilliant", but this user also shares a vision of an ideal address book/contact manager.

• Working with Windows
  Plaxo gets a mention in Macworld showing how we helped the author solve a significant problem of syncing his information between Windows and the Mac.

  
  

We'd like to encourage people to share their thoughts, comments, and experience with Plaxo by blogging about it. We're listening and will use the feedback to improve the Plaxo service. We'll also try to highlight those posts here on our blog from time to time.

We had a minor glitch in our servers which is affecting some users when they try to login to Plaxo Online. Our customers said it wasn't so much a problem that the service was down, the problem was more that there wasn't a channel where we could communicate service-level issues with them.

So rather than pretend it's not happening (as some services are prone to do ;) ), we listened to our customers and created the Plaxo OPS blog. If you're a Plaxo user and want to keep up-to-date on what's going on with our service, just subscribe to that blog or check it every once in a while. We think this is a win-win situation, let us know what you think.

I confess. I blog and I read blogs. I think they are great and I'm addicted. There... I've said it, so I guess I'm now on my way to recovery.

My blogging activity generally centers around things related to Plaxo, but I've recently started branching out more. Like many, I'll uses blogs to keep tabs on news, sports, politics, humor, and technology, but I also like to track discussions that mention Plaxo. Services such as Bloglines and Technorati are extremely useful for staying on top of the many topics that pop-up each day, and members alike often bring things to my attention.

If there is a discussion or article I feel I can add to, I usually make it a point to reach out and post a comment. Admittedly, this sometimes freaks people out. I guess it catches them off guard that anyone from a company would take the time to respond to their small corner of the world. Some cynics have viewed my posts as a PR stunt. My personal favorite was when I was accused of being a robot.

Certainly, I can't control what people think, but let me tell you why I blog: because it's the right thing to do!!! Here at Plaxo, we have an environment that encourages blogging and other forms of direct communications with users. Our CEO blogs, as do many other employees of Plaxo.

I personally feel the level of support provided by many companies today is less that desireable (that's a nice way of saying horrible). My perception is that many companies simply hide behind their support organizations.

I think responsible companies need to reach out to their users and encourage feedback and discussion - good or bad - about how they are performing. Companies should engage in discussions with users so they can learn how to better improve their products or services. What better way to achieve this than through blogging???

So please, blog away! Tell us what you think on your own terms in your own blog. Does Plaxo work for you? How do you use it? What do you like? What don't you like? What would you change? You don't even have to be a member. I've found the best feedback comes from people who don't use the service. The feedback is used to drive the direction of our service. And if I find your blog and respond, hopefully I won't freak you out!

(Note: if you trackback to this entry, that will also make sure we see it!)

Stacy Martin
Plaxo Privacy Officer
privacy @t plaxo.com