Napster Cofounder Tackles Email Issue...self updating?
Date: Tuesday, November 12 @ 22:35:05 GMT
Topic: Microsoft
Napster co-founder Sean Parker uses a diagram on the relationship of Plaxo and Outlook in Plaxo offices in Mountain View, CA.
Plaxo is a software app that automatically updates contacts on Microsoft's Outlook program!
How long till we hear "Plaxo" and "virus" in the same sentence?
whole article cut and pasted inside. LA Times.
By Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writer
Two years after leaving Napster Inc., company co-founder Sean Parker is reemerging as the head of a Silicon Valley consumer software firm that he hopes will provoke a lot less excitement.
Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up Plaxo Inc. today will begin distributing a free system that sends e-mail messages to a user's correspondents, asking for updated contact information. Once received, the system automatically changes the user's Microsoft Outlook contact list to reflect the new data.
The system will become more useful as more people join because it allows users to dispatch updates on their whereabouts to everyone else who uses Plaxo without sending any e-mail.
Parker, 22, said he came up with the idea out of frustration after assembling a huge number of contacts very quickly, then having much of the information go bad.
"I realized my address book was such a mess, the only way to fix it would be to raise money, recruit a team and build a company to do it," he said.
Plaxo's competitors include 2-year-old GoodContacts.com Inc. of Ottawa, which offers a pay service, and AddressSender.com from Glenwood Springs, Colo.-based Udell Enterprises Inc., which has both free and pay offerings. Some analysts who have been using Plaxo say it represents an improvement over the competition.
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