The first inklings I had that a new version of Onfolio were in the works were stray comments made by Scoble and a brief mention by Buzz during a completely unrelated conversation. I've used Onfolio in the past and enjoyed the polished user interface it presented. I ultimately stopped using it when I switched to using Firefox as my primary browser because the deskbar in version 1.0 was a bit clumsy. When I began sketching out this current series of web information managers, I fully intended to include Onfolio in my short list of programs to recommend, despite these personal quibbles.

To my delight, I learned, after some correspondence with JJ Allaire, founder of Onfolio, that not only would Onfolio 2.0 provide native support for the Firefox browser, but also that it would now feature a completely integrated RSS reader. As Scoble observed in a brief post about this new feature, while he and I use NewsGator for aggregating and reading RSS in Outlook, there is a lot of appeal to having this capability in the browser and ultimately this is where RSS probably will be most successful with the mass consumer audience that is just beginning to discover the medium. Yahoo!, Bloglines, and other web-based RSS aggregators have certainly demonstrated that the browser is a capable environment for reading feeds and jumping to a blog site to read more. And, this avoids the context switch between Outlook and the browser that NewsGator (in Outlook as opposed to the Online Services version) requires.

Like the other tools I've been discussing in this series, Onfolio lets you collect, organize, search, and share information you gather from the web and local files (Office documents, PDFs, images, etc.). What Onfolio 2.0 does to push this paradigm forward is add Outlook e-mail and RSS feeds to the mix of data objects you can add to your collections. The Outlook add-in included with Onfolio is a great idea - it needs work - but it's a great idea. Currently, it only works on e-mail messages, not on tasks, calendar items, or contacts. I'd like to be able to add all of these objects to my collections.

You can send either the e-mail itself (as an Outlook file) or the message text (as a snippet) to your collection. You cannot use the add-in to capture just a portion of the text however. It also doesn't like the NewsGator "Post" items (which use the newsgroup post format rather than standard e-mail). This is not such a big deal with the built-in RSS reader in Onfolio but if you elect to use NewsGator, Blogbot, or even bring standard newsgroup information (NNTP) into Outlook, you won't be able to add it to your collections using the add-in. All of these data objects can be captured using Onfolio's clipboard capture however - just copy the selected text and then choose the global "paste to Onfolio" keyboard command (Ctrl + Shift + F11).

There are so many "goodies" in this new version that I've really come to appreciate. The version I've been using for the past month is also beta 1, so there are still some issues that need to be worked out (more on that below). But as one tester put it recently on the Beta Discussion Forum maintained by Onfolio, this first beta release, in most ways, is more polished and high quality than many official releases. The Onfolio team is not only using this forum to discuss the beta release but have also created a group blog for testers to post to (by invitation but all you have to do is ask). They are one of the most responsive groups of developers I've experienced and reply quickly, accurately, and thoughtfully to every post.

The three features I have found most valuable so far are:

Browser support: Onfolio 2.0 not only supports Internet Explorer and Firefox, it also has specific tools to support the Maxthon browser (which ought to make Chris Pirillo happy). This is the best browser support offered by any of the tools I've discussed in this series that install on your system (as opposed to the web-based tools like Furl).

Advanced UI: This is an intangible and purely personal preference (but it's my review so you can decide whether you agree with me or not), but Onfolio has the most thoughtfully designed user interface in this category. It's the combination of a lot of little things including:

• An "intelligent sidebar" that switches to a side-by-side view when you widen it and a more standard hierarchical display when narrowed (see screen shot above)

• A nicely implemented "newspaper view" for reading RSS feeds

• A small toolbar that appears over each RSS feed that allows you to add it ton Onfolio collection, e-mail it, or add it to a neat feature called the Reading List that lets you quickly tag items of particular interest for later review.

• Keyboard shortcuts for virtually everything!

• Each instance of the program remembers its own state. For example, I tend to leave the deskbar set on my Collection, while I leave the browser sidebar set on my Bookmarks (which are easily imported from either Internet Explorer or Firefox).

RSS reader: This feature is so intelligently integrated into the Onfolio environment that I'll be really surprised if some of the other developers of this kind of tool don't follow Onfolio's lead. As Scoble said, "this is the aggregator I've been looking for" and the more I use it, the more I tend to agree. Again, we're dealing with a beta and there are some issues that need to be worked out (I've been working with the Onfolio team to figure out an issue with performance behind a proxy server at work) but the commitment to getting this right is most definitely there.

I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements in the next beta release and plan to continue testing Onfolio 2.0 as it moves closer to official release. Based on the conversations taking place on the group blog and in the beta discussion forum, it's clear that the team at Onfolio is actively listening and responding to the many excellent suggestions they're receiving for the community of testers which, in my experience, is how great software is built.

While in beta, Onfolio 2.0 is available at no charge. The current official release, version 1.0.3 is available in two editions: Standard ($49.95) and Professional ($99.95). Both can be evaluated for 30 days prior to purchase. A free light version, Onfolio Express, is available from Microsoft as part of their Partner Pack. All editions of Onfolio require the .Net framework and run on Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.