Onfolio: more evil.
They sold out to Microsoft. That’s not what makes them evil. They’re evil because they are completely dumping their support for Firefox in the process, which means that come time for Firefox 2 I’ll have a $149 virtual paperweight. Given a choice between Onfolio and Firefox, Firefox wins. Onfolio has offered refunds, but not for folks who bought the more expensive Academic version since the new Microsoft & free version doesn’t have the same features. I don’t care, I’ve asked for the refund anyway. I find it faster and easier to save most things off to Evernote anyway. And that’s already free. It was the saving of searchable PDFs in the same folder as other files and websites that I really liked in Onfolio, but not enough to switch to Internet Explorer.

Couldn’t they take a lesson from X1? When they sold to Yahoo they had the new version but they transitioned the existing paid version towards “Enterprise” with all the features and support that it used to have. Even though it’s just me, I stuck with the full client version of X1 because it has features that the freebie version doesn’t (and it doesn’t have the ads, either). For example, I have X1 index old PST files without my having to have them open in Outlook. Handy.And they’re still fully supporting it!

Plaxo: less evil.
I have a couple of pet peeves. One: websites that make noise before I’ve asked them to make noise. Two: Any service or feature that requires other people to do something in order for it to be functional for me. This includes Earthlink’s SpamArrest and any other challenge/response spam filter. Any Outlook read receipt request. It’s not my problem that you get too much spam. I get it too. I manage my spam, you need to manage yours.

Until recently, I included Plaxo in this category. I never responded to update requests and I found them to be intrusive and annoying. You want to know if my contact details have changed? Ask me. Don’t have some service hit me up for membership.

Now, TechCrunch reports that Plaxo is no longer doing the hard sell, so I gave it a second look. You know, it’s not that bad! I really like it, so much so that I may spring for the premium version. I’m trying the free demo and the merge duplicates feature works nicely. It’s got a very nice interface, installs smoothly and finally!! the Address Book on my G5 is now in sync with the Contacts folder in Outlook on my PC. In Outlook, it adds a little button to the corner of my emails letting me know whether or not the person is in my address book, giving me the option of just adding them or adding them and asking for their update. I just add them to my address book quietly, I won’t ask for updated details. Ever. It’s my service for managing my contacts. If you’re already using the service and it helps keep my info more up-to-date, great. If not, it’s my service for managing my contacts.

Only 32 or so of my 900+ contacts (work and personal) are already Plaxo members, so their contact info is up-to-date. But that’s okay. I have my work info available to all Plaxo members, my personal info only to people who have already counted me as a contact. For everyone else, I have to either deal with their outdated info or hope that they become Plaxo members on their own. Maybe now that they’re less evil, it will happen.