Taglocity, for those of you that don’t know, is a simple add-in designed to allow for “tagging” of emails, tasks, appointments, etc. in an effort to make organization of those items in Microsoft’s infamous email client a little easier. 

I’m personally a big fan so I was a bit troubled when I received a message this morning stating that my beta software had expired.  After downloading the most up-to-date version from taglocity.com, I was presented with a few big changes.  The two biggest changes in the new release are the “Taglocity Task Pane” and “Conversation View.” 

The first big change, the task pane, is where the Xobni reference comes into play.  The task pane, much like in Xobni, is displayed to the right of the message you’re reading and is an area where you can view snapshot information in regards to the individual who sent you the message.  (e.g., recently exchanged messages, files exchanged with the sender, number of emails to/from, etc.)  Those of you who currently use Xobni know exactly what I’m talking about.  In fact, here’s a visual comparison of the two:

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

To clarify,  I’m not saying that Taglocity has blatantly ripped Xobni off or anything because I think the new task pane fits perfectly into the features that they’ve been building up over the last few versions: groups/networking.

The other new feature, conversation view, is exactly what you might expect.  Clicking the conversation view button on the Taglocity toolbar brings up a quick window that neatly displays all of the messages related to the same subject.  It seems to work perfectly and is a great replacement to Outlook’s “Find Related Messages” which inevitably takes a while to pull up.  (Xobni also has this feature but it’s a little too slow for me.)

If you’ve yet to give Taglocity a try, you can sign up for the beta at Taglocity.com but I’d personally recommend reading about what all the software has to offer prior to doing so.  It’s designed to do more than just “tag” messages – although, admittedly, that’s primarily what I use it for – so far.  Also, a recent post on Taglocity’s blog also gives some great insight on what the company desires to achieve with its flagship product: “Saving Email – A Brief History.”

devunity, a TechCrunch50 finalist, will soon be providing a safe-haven for all of those unsung, true geek heroes: coders. 

How exactly? By providing “the first social development platform” granting you and your fellow nerdlings a place to “develop applications together online – using popular languages like php, python, perl, asp, js, etc.” 

That’s right – there’ll be no-one to take your lunch money or stuff you in a locker over at devunity.

If you just spilled Diet Mountain Dew (or, dare I say, regular Dew) all over your keyboard because you just couldn’t contain your excitement, I highly suggest you sign up for the alpha-test going on now.

Yeah, you heard me: alpha test.  Meaning, of course, that the site isn’t available for mass consumption quite yet.  Sorry for the tease.  We signed up about a week ago and have yet to receive an invitation so we can’t say for certain how long you’d have to wait to get in on all the nerdtastic fun.  Sign up now:

P.S. – is it blatantly obvious that my worldview is derived entirely from Conan O’ Brien and The Simpsons?