by Brian Solis

Why am I writing about this?

Well, number one, I like Joseph Smarr. He’s a good guy.

Second, I’ve been writing quite a bit about the future of the inbox lately and how I’m less inclined, at the moment, to manage my business relationships from within social networks. But if I could bring the networks and the updates from my contacts to my inbox, I would be very intrigued.

Plaxo’s new Outlook toolbar allows you to synchronize your existing Plaxo Address Book to your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express Address Book. Wherever you install a Plaxo toolbar your address book will be consistent and stay updated automatically.

The new Outlook plugin allows people to see recent activity via a person’s Pulse stream (which is basically an aggregated lifestream of social activity across blogs, Digg, Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr, Upcoming, Yelp, Pownce, and everything else with an RSS feed.

You can download it here.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Plaxo, or Facebook.