You receive a lot of email. And sometimes it’s from a person you don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could magically learn about them without leaving the email environment?
Enter Rapportive, a free browser plug-in for Gmail that replaces the sidebar ads with neatly presented contact information for the people you email.
While the product bills itself as a customer relationship tool we find useful for our personal email as well. (The application currently works with Firefox and Google Chrome).
Once downloaded the app runs alongside the main email window as a browser add-on.
When you open an email (or mouse over an email address) it will show you the person’s photo, bio and links to their social networking profiles (in some cases it’ll even show recent Tweets).
In essence it creates a mini-profile about the person in the right-hand sidebar. You can also add your own notes to any contact.
While the application requires access to your email it doesn’t need your password. And the company is explicit about its commitment to privacy on its policy page.
Or you can just keep guessing at who’s emailing you those TPS reports.