The Xobni Gadget Store allows users to pick and choose from nearly 20 free and paid applications to add to their Outlook experience.
At launch, the store includes gadgets from notable productivity, CRM, social media and collaborative-focused companies including Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce CRM, Chatter and Yammer.
Gadgets are meant to add an additional, more contextual layer to the inbox experience. The Evernote gadget, for instance, lets Outlook users view their Evernote notes related to each of their email contacts in the right-hand sidebar.
The release of the Xobni Gadget Store is part of a larger push by the startup to recruit third-party developers to build applications for their email platform. The Xobni Gadget Platform is based on the OpenSocial Platform and is also accessible to enterprises that wish to create sidebar or message body applications for internal deployment.
Xobni's offering is competitive with the lesser known RedCritter for Outlook, which also features an app store for Outlook and an API for developers.
Xobni Gadget Store applications are said to be mostly free of charge, but paid gadgets will cost the user $9.99 a year.
The full arsenal of available Outlook gadgets is listed below:
Productivity Gadgets: Dropbox, Evernote, GoldMail, Google Translate, JIRA, WebEx
Collaboration Gadgets: Huddle, Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer
Content Gadgets: Facebook, Flickr, Hoover’s, Klout, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing, YouTube, Yelp
CRM Gadgets: Salesforce CRM