Premium Plaxo for Comcast users …

I recently switched from DSL (which I'd had since it first was invented) to Comcast Cable for my Internet connection (and TV and phone). By doing so I saved about a hundred bucks a month over AT&T and DirecTV. Of course as soon as I switched, AT&T started calling me with a bundle that was roughly the same price, but that's a different story.

One of the things that happened a while back was that Plaxo was bought by Comcast. I have always been a premium Plaxo user, feeling that I wanted to support them since I find the product so incredibly useful. What I learned was that if you are a Comcast subscriber, you are automatically a Plaxo premium user.

Now, being a premium subscriber used to only mean you got VIP support and access to a couple of tools (like the address and calendar deduplication tool). But now Plaxo has announced that the Outlook synch is a premium member only tool. While I worry that this decreases the value of the service (since there will be fewer reasons for people to sign up, therefore fewer members, and decreasing the number of automatic updates I get), what is interesting is that every Comcast subscriber gets access to these premium services.

To activate this, first you have to make sure that you are signed up for Plaxo through your Comcast email account. First, log in to your Comcast email by going to http://www.comcast.net and clicking on the Email link in the "My Comcast" portlet:

If you're logged in already it will go straight to your email, otherwise you'll get the login screen, where you need to log in:

Log in with your Comcast email address. This will be something like your last name and street address unless you've changed it. Once you have logged in, you'll be at the Comcast email screen, which uses the Zimbra email client. From the tabs, you'll want to choose the address book:

The first time you go to the address book, you'll be asked to build your address book:

If you click on the "build your address book", you'll go to an initial Plaxo setup screen. Since they already have some of your information (name and email), they don't have to ask you for anything but where you want to populate your address book from:

So now it gets interesting. If you click on Plaxo, you can link an existing Plaxo account to your Comcast email. If you were already a Plaxo user, this will get your current address book and calendar.

If you're not already a Plaxo subscriber, you can choose one of the other options to build your address book by logging you in and pulling the address book from there:

Note that the GMail synch only works for accounts ending in "gmail.com",  and not GMail accounts that are using Google Apps. I suspect that Yahoo accounts would also be restricted to "yahoo.com", but I don't know that for sure.

There's a shortcut to signup to Plaxo immediately by simply going to http://www.plaxo.com/ftue/activateComcast, clicking the Activate button will get you set up:

This one does require you to fill in your name and basic information (or link to your existing Plaxo account by following the link at the bottom right). Either way, once you have the account linked, you are signed up and active as a premium member. Now not only can you set up synch points, but you can also install the Outlook synch tool on any computer you use.

Along the way the steps will ask you to update your address book, and if you want to invite your friends. I always skip that step, since I send my friends enough email already.

At the end, you can validate that you're a premium member by clicking on "Settings" at the top right of the screen, and then choosing "Premium" from the list at the left:

This shows my account has premium status.

If you use Outlook, there's a few more steps to get fully set up with the Outlook synch tool. There are multiple ways to get there, but ultimately you want to download the sync tool from http://www.plaxo.com/people/tools?src=tools

Note that you have access to all of these tools, some of which are very cool (like being able to roll back your address book). If you aren't a Plaxo premium subscriber, you can download and install the tool, but you won't be able to use it, since the synch verifies the account status when you run it for the first time.

Plaxo has a nice walkthrough of the install process here: http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/outlook?src=pulse_tools_outlook〈=en, so I won't duplicate that. One thing that I did learn the last time I did this for somebody is that you have to install it with an account that has admin priviledges. The install won't fail, but you just won't get the Plaxo tool bar in Outlook.

Once the install completes, and you start Outlook up, it will walk you through a wizard that will sync your Outlook and Plaxo address books. From then on, you should see the Plaxo tool bar at the top of your Outlook screen:

There are lots of other neat things about Plaxo, not the least of which is that you can synch between multiple machines. There's a version of Plaxo for the Mac, and it seems to do a fair job of interacting with the built-in Mac synch tools (including MobileMe).

I'd definitely recommend you take advantage of this "free" service if you are a Comcast internet subscriber.

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