Be sure to check out our press release today regarding our Open Platform Program. More information is available at: http://www.plaxo.com/api.

Our Open Platform Program encompasses our open API as well as the Plaxo Address Book Widget.

The Plaxo API is currently available as a Representational State Transfer (REST) Web Service and allows developers to integrate Plaxo synchronization functionality directly into their own applications. For example, our recent Plaxo for Thunderbird client utilizes the Plaxo API. In the future, other representations or protocol bindings may also be defined.

The Plaxo Address Book Widget allows a web site developer to add address book functionaity to their site through some very simple scripting. Visitors to the site can (1) seamlessly import contacts from multiple address books, (2) select entries, and (3) enter selected data into web page forms. For the millions of existing Plaxo members, the Widget allows them to access their complete Plaxo address book directly from any website utilizing the Address Book Widget.

For users, imagine being able to go to your favorite online store, selecting a gift, and auto-filling in the shipping information directly from your Plaxo-enabled address book. For web site developers, imaging offering greater ease and convenience to your users, and knowing that the information they are providing is accurate and up-to-date.

As you may have seen, Thunderbird 1.5 is now available for download, and we've got an updated Plaxo Toolbar for Thunderbird to go with it. In addition to supporting Thunderbird 1.5, this new version is faster, more stable, and contains various other bug fixes. If you're already running the toolbar in Thunderbird, you can just go into the extensions manager and click "Update" to get the new version. Otherwise you can download it from our site. Enjoy!

Thanks,
The Plaxo Team

A user in our forum asked about Plaxo support for the Mac OS X (I'm assuming he was referring to Entourage, since Plaxo for Thunderbird (beta) is available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux).

We receive numerous requests to support various email clients and services and it is our stated intention to support Plaxo across multiple platforms, applications and services. Support for clients and services such as Skype, Mac OS X, ACT!, Incredimail, Lotus Notes, Groupwise, Firefox, and gMail are a few of the ones people often ask about.

[UPDATE: add to the list Opera, Mac Mail, Gmail, Hotmail]

Unfortunately, it's difficult for us to answer questions about unavailable features or releases. With our good intention of underpromising and overdelivering, we've taken the policy of publicly discussing features and releases after they are available. I realize this probably is not very comforting for some of our members excited to see Plaxo expanded to their favorite application or service, but hopefully people understand.

I will say this: personally, one of the things I like most about working here is our willingness to listen and respond to feedback. We appreciate all of the feedback we receive and it really does help to shape the direction, features, and priorities of Plaxo.

Within just the last two years, member feedback has helped Plaxo to expand beyond support for just Outlook and Outlook Express. Plaxo is available as a toolbar for Internet Explorer and Thunderbird. Plaxo can sync address data with services such as Yahoo! and AOL, and people can access their Plaxo data through Web and Wireless.

And of course, there is more to come. As you might imagine, we are looking very closely at the list I mentioned above, and many others as well. I feel we have some very exciting things in the pipeline that we're happy to discuss... once they become available.

Today is an exciting day for the open source fans at the office—we�ve officially announced the first beta of the Plaxo Toolbar for Thunderbird. If you�re already a Plaxo member, just go straight to the download page and get started! If not, just register for a Plaxo account first, it should only take a minute. :)

It�s no secret that we�ve been planning a Thunderbird client for some time now but we wanted to make sure we got some crucial things right, including:

• Cross platform support—this means the client was written in JavaScript and is packaged in a standard XPI—so it will work on Mac and Linux as well as on Windows.
• An easy sync experience with your Plaxo address book and all the other address books Plaxo supports—this means you can sync your personal Thunderbird account with your Outlook account at work, and/or access your Thunderbird contacts on the Web from anywhere.
• An enhanced Thunderbird address book with some of the popular features from our Outlook toolbar—such as the "Click to Connect" button when reading your e-mail, support for photos and microBlogs in your address book, and one-click access to Plaxo Online.
• Most of the usual Plaxo features that you are used to.

If you use Thunderbird, give our toolbar a try and let us know what you think. We�d love to hear your comments and feedback on our forum or through e-mail at beta [at] plaxo.com.

btw: This represents a big step for Plaxo—as we continue to expand the platforms we support—since it reaches an entirely new set of people that we have not been able to support. Expect to see more platforms later this year. Note that many Plaxo users are not aware the we already support Internet Explorer and Yahoo! (beta).

Thanks and enjoy,
The Plaxo Team

PS: For you developers out there, note that we�ve released this toolbar under the Mozilla Public License, which means it�s open source and you�re free to tinker with it. To help facilitate, we�ve set up a developer area on the Plaxo forums. We�re also actively working on an open API that will let anyone Plaxo-enable their favorite application, so stay tuned!

This is Dru Nelson, the Plaxo engineer that built most of Plaxo for Thunderbird. He's a great guy, good friend, and a heckuvan engineer!