On a personal level, I'm still confused how Microsoft Outlook manages its database. Boot your computer and the first thing you'll need to do is download and check your email. If you're anything like me, you may have more than one source for your email and you will have to sit there and wait for Outlook to stop downloading and processing your incoming mail, before you use your computer. It's got to be the slowest application on my machine. Worse, as it's all based around one central database, if this is affected by a system crash or other problem, you can lose a lot of your important data and email correspondence.

MOBackup 4.3 is a commercial tool which you can use to backup your Microsoft Outlook email, data, contacts, calendars and other information. If you then suffer from a system crash or other problem in the future, you can quickly restore this data.

MOBackup link.

I've asked around, but no-one can give me a clear idea on how you successfully manage to follow more than 300 people through Twitter. Surely you must spend your day sorting the wheat from the chaff (and there's a lot of chaff), just to be able to chat and respond to your friends or colleagues? Still, I suppose if you look like you are following 300 people, it gives the impression you're immensely popular. There must be a better way of managing your incoming and outgoing tweets.

The Nambu Network 1.1.12 is a free tool for your Mac that enables you to follow people from multiple social networking sites, including Twitter and Friendfeed. Indeed, these are the primary two, at the moment. Still, it's well designed and enables you to group together key friends, see who's following you and much more. We're still not clear why it wasn't created in Adobe Air, as many other similar apps are and this enables cross-platform development.

Nambu link.

The problem with working in a corporate environment is that everyone has Internet access, but few can be trusted. For that reason, many employees are banned from accessing eBay, social networking sites and even online retailers such as Amazon. However, chat clients such as messenger and Twitter are often allowed. Follow a few hundred people and you'll soon find that tweets are incoming quicker than you have time to read and follow the updates. Your boss will soon realise that you spend more time on Twitter than you do on your work.

Spreadtweet is a tool that offers a fake user-interface for your Twitter conversations, presenting them within an Office 2003 or Office 2007 design. Whilst you look like you are working in Excel, you're really reading your tweets. As it's based on Adobe Air, you can use Spreadtweet across Windows, Mac and Linux computers and there are different user-interface's depending on your OS.

Spreadtweet link.

If you want to keep in touch with other users across social networking sites, which messenger would you install on your computer? If you are a business user, then Skype is a solution as many of us use the tool to make cheap international calls and it can be used to message other members. However, individuals are rarely on Skype and they use Facebook or MSN to chat to other users. Worse, business networking sites such as LinkedIn encourage you to connect, but there's no facility to message or quickly contact other users.

Trillian Astra has been in development for years and still hasn't moved beyond internal beta....until now. This messenger will enable you to chat to just about any user on any social networking platform, including MSN, AIM, Skype, ICQ and others. Better still, if you sign up to the beta testing, you can install and test straight away. There is only a beta version for the Windows platform at the moment, but Mac and iPhone versions are on the way.

Trillian Astra beta link.

One problem with Twitter is that it's very difficult to follow so many tweets. If you have over 100 'friends' that you follow, you can very easily miss a conversation with tweets coming through all the time. There must be another way to keep track of particular topics or find a particular discussion, without having to follow so many people.

Sideline from Yahoo is a free Adobe Air-based tool that will enable you to search for and locate tweets based around a particular term. For example, if you wanted to search for 'vnunet.com', simply set this up as a particular term of interest and Sideline will show any tweet that references this search term. Sideline from Yahoo is based on Adobe Air so will work with any operating system that Air supports. Note that it's not a tool for adding your tweet to a conversation.

Sideline from Yahoo link.

If you're a business owner where you are responsible for a number of international calls, you'll want to reduce costs. One way is to install Skype and use this to make your international calls. You'll certainly save a packet of cash. Whilst other phone manufacturers have allowed Skype access on their mobiles, Apple were reluctant. All this has changed with the official Skype app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Skype for iPhone will enable you to make calls through a WiFi network. It's rumoured that the app will enable you to make Skype-based calls over your 3G network, using the forthcoming iPhone software revision 3.0. No doubt this will annoy the mobile providers, but as Skype is primarily used for long-distance calls, it shouldn't affect their revenue streams too greatly.

Of course, you can also use the Skype app to handle your messaging. We use Skype for keeping in contact with key software developers, for example. As this will work on the iPod Touch, you could connect a microphone with the revision 2 and use this as a phone.

Skype for iPhone link.

The problem with the Skype is that this network is closed to third-party technology, so the network-spanning chat clients such as Adium, Trillian or Miranda will not enable you to speak to users who are connected via Skype. As Skype is used as the business chat client of choice, it means that you need Skype and another messenger running, to keep in contact with all of your friends and business clients.

Fring is different and is one of the first chat clients that will enable you to see which Skype users are online and chat with them via your mobile phone. You can also chat with users from other networks such as AIM, MSN, Facebook and more. You can also use fring to make cheap international calls if your phone allows this facility. iPod Touch users can use fring as their social networking mobile device, whilst they are on the move.

Fring for iPhone link.

They say that more and more employees are starting to work from home, but then the only access we have to our work colleagues is through email, personal instant messengers and the phone. Problem is that many projects now rely on multiple users, situated in different timezones, sharing the same files and with different operating systems. There aren't too many chat clients that you can use between both your colleagues and temporary people who are contributing to a project.

Propane is a Mac tool that uses the Campfire network within a desktop client. Campfire is a chat system that you can use privately, within your company, to enable colleagues to chat, share files and track projects. Problem is that Campfire is a web-only project and you won't want to keep opening your browser to chat to other users. Step up Propane which brings these features within a desktop client. Ideal, although it would be far better if the author had produced a cross-platform version, perhaps using Adobe Air?

Propane for Mac link.

As many of our friends and work colleagues are connected to different social networking sites, it's too tempting to start a new account, with another site, just to keep in touch. This makes keeping in touch with your work colleagues more difficult. At work, we need to do more than chat. We need to share projects, files and 'to do' information. You can't do that by connecting to more than one business networking site.

AlertThingy 3 is a free cross-platform tool that enables you to follow people from various social and business networking sites, from one interface. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Huddle, Basecamp and many others. Better still, you can follow the latest news by subscribing to news feeds and integrating these in to your feed. As AlertThingy is based on Adobe Air, you can download and use the same application on either your Windows or Mac computer.

AlertThingy link.

Quite frankly, I'm bored of using Microsoft Outlook and spend quite a bit of time seeking an alternative. Now I've finally realised why so many business users keep buying and using Microsoft Office - Outlook is such a good business collaboration tool that it stops you seeking a legitimate alternative. The biggest problem we have with Outlook is that it's so darned slow. Start your computer, open Outlook and it can take 15 minutes to download and process 200 emails. Of course, that's factoring in using a security tool to check incoming email for possible hazards.

However, there's a brand new email client available and it's looking good. Postbox 1.0b7 is the first public preview of the new technology. We've tried both the Mac and Windows edition and our opinion is that the Mac version is superb, and already a replacement for Apple Mail, where the Windows version is decent, but we've had to go back to Outlook. The Mac version is designed brilliantly and enables you to run quick searches, with the minimum of fuss. The Windows version looks like it's been converted from the Mac version and needs a bit more work.

Postbox for Windows link.