There is a kind of software that only exists to fix the pitfalls of so-called standard software. Especially in the Microsoft world. Take for example Xobni (backwards for: Inbox). Xobni tries to organise the data rubbish created by Outlook. That’s quite an ambitious task, and Xobni is not the first vendor to take on this endeavour. Xobni creates profiles from the tangled mass of mails and files you exchange on a daily basis.

Earlier this year, Xobni launched a Blackberry app that promises to manage your mobile address book. This promise reminds me of the Address book 2.0 created by Cellity (which wasacquired last summer by Nokia and the service discontinued).

Yesterday I shelled out 10 bucks and installed the Xobni app on my Blackberry. The installation process went smoothly, and after a short while I found the Xobni address book populated by 1171 contacts, sorted by popularity. According to Xobni, the people I correspond with the most should be listed at the top. Well, seems that I babble to myself most of the time, at least that’s what Xobni thinks.

The import process clearly has its flaws. For example, in at least one case it pulled credit card information from a mail and transformed it into telephone numbers. That shouldn’t happen. On the other hand, the LinkedIn and Facebook integration works well: Xobni pulls profile data, at least profile pictures, from both platforms and saves it to the address book. Over time this should lead to a self-updating address book, and that would save a lot of hassle.