Connected With LinkedinThese days social networks are getting too big to handle. So they’ve figured it works to break things up into specific-use-case apps and keep their users engaged in activities they find useful. LinkedIn already has a couple of apps, but now its contacts app, Connected, comes to Android to go more mainstream. On both the Play Store and the App Store, it’s a free little utility that calls for minimal fiddling.
Connected is a like a slideshow of contact cards, pushing up cards for those of your connections that have a birthday or work anniversary. Although you may have opted to get LinkedIn Updates by email, you can instead try the app from where you have a bit more information on the person, meeting notes from your calendar entry (though I couldn’t make that appear) and buttons to instantly message the contact. The idea is to use all those birthdays and anniversaries as an excuse to get in touch — leading to who-knows-what in the future.
Use an app like Connected for times when you need to network intensively, offloading it when you’re done, and getting it back whenever you need it. Just like LinkedIn’s job search app, Connected gives you a way of focusing on a strategic task.
Back In The GameMicrosoft did the smart thing. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. With everyone using Gmail so heavily, along with other email services, Outlook was gradually losing the plot. After all, there was a time when most people just used Outlook straight out of Windows and Microsoft Office. Today, in the post-PC era, other routes are taken for email. So Microsoft made an Outlook app for iOS and Android, usable on phones and tablets. And what do you know, many consider it the best email app around.
The Outlook app is for those who want to actually work with their email, not swipe it all away with a glance. First, there’s a Focused inbox, which picks up mail that could be the most important for you. On iOS, you can swipe to delete or archive or schedule. Very smoothly, a pop up will prompt you to give an approximate time to deal with it later. The rest of the mail is in the Other category.
With the Outlook app, you can pull in your Gmail account, Yahoo mail, iCloud, and, of course ,regular Outlook.com and Office 365 mail. But it doesn’t have support for you to be able to add the server from your workplace. You’d have to find a workaround for that.
The app has full Calendar support. You can easily see your appointments and figure out availability as you go through your mail. There are filters that let you quickly get to attachments, all unread mail, etc.
(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 23-03-2015)