MultiMi (beta)

There are apps that push for separation, aiming to be unique and discrete tools for completing specialized tasks, and other apps that pull like apps together into a single, cohesive space. MultiMi (beta) (free) from AVG is a puller. It hooks into numerous apps and services, like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, LinkedIn, and even your local file directories, and creates a central dashboard for using them. MultiMi thoroughly covers all the bases, with a great group of well-known apps and services supported and several ways to drill into your content, for example, by "messages" or "media" or "documents." It doesn't matter where content lives or how it first reached you?perhaps shared on Facebook or linked to via Twitter?MultiMi indexes it appropriately with similar content.

MultiMi has good search functionality, works reasonably fast, and is free to download and install, but only on Windows (XP, Vista, 7) PCs. A similar tool called Engagio (beta) (free, 4 stars) is Web-based, and therefore platform agnostic, although it only gathers information from online sites and services, not locally stored files. Another competitor, X1 Pro 7 (beta) (free while in beta, 4 stars) is just as good as MultiMi, perhaps even a little more attractive in design, but also not Mac-compatible.

Supported Services and Apps
Exploring MultiMi's numerous features will open your eyes to just how comprehensive an application this is. After installing and launching the program for the first time, you'll need to give it permission to index data from at least a few of your apps to see the tool in action. It doesn't look like much until it's connected to services and apps, which include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Google+, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Box.net, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, and your own email (Pop3 and Imap supported). You can also connect MultiMi to your local file system.

From MultiMi's dashboard, you can update your status on various social networks, posting to just one or multiple sites at a time. However, you can't connect more than one account to a single service.

I have yet to get MultiMi to authenticate Hotmail, and I don't know why. All the other connections I made completed smoothly and on the first try. I've attempted to reach Hotmail on various days, however, with no success.

MultiMi Features
When MultiMi does make contact with these various sites, services, and directories, it indexes information from them?you can control how much and how often?and categorizes it. The categories, which appear along the left side of the dashboard in collapsible preview panes, are: Messages, Social, Events, Photos, Media, Documents, and Connections. Messages identifies anything that is a message, whether an email or a Facebook message or direct messages in Twitter. Social only shows socially shared information, like LinkedIn updates and posted jobs, items from your Facebook news feed, tweets and retweets in Twitter. The other tabs house information that you would expect, too: Media contains videos and photos, Documents has documents, and so forth.

I like MultiMi's premise in organization a lot. It doesn't matter if a message came from Facebook or email, it's a message that needs to be treated as a message, rather than viewed as something separate, like a "Facebook message." If you rely on social networking services to communicate, MultiMi can revolutionize the way you interact with your services for the better.

Although the app is reasonably quick, I saw a little lag when toggling the collapsible panes. You can only open the various sections, not close them; the current one closes whenever you open a new one (see the slideshow). MultiMi is still technically in beta, and this is the kind of thing I would expect to be fine-tuned by the official release.

Another impressive feature in MultiMi, found at the very bottom of the list of collapsible tabs, is somewhat misleadingly called New Tab. It looks like a way to create a new category, but in fact, it creates an Internet browser tab right in your MultiMi dashboard. With the Internet bound into the service, you could get a lot of work done without ever leaving the interface. Similarly, whenever you click a link that's been shared via a social network, or hyperlinked on a document, MultiMi opens it right inside the same window. It even tells you the source of the link. For example, I clicked a link someone shared via Twitter, which opened to an Instagram page, and "Instagram" became the title of the new tab that was created in the left pane.

Basic image-editing tools are included to make quick fixes on pictures before you share them. MultiMi lets you send an image with just a few clicks. You can even select which email address you want to use from the list of connected email programs you've authenticated.

Indexing and Search
MultiMi gives you good control over how often apps index and how much data loads. In a settings area, you can adjust these elements, but only to options that MultiMi supplies. You can tell MultiMi to load new content from LinkedIn every 20 minutes beginning a week ago, or every two hours, or every three minutes?because those are options from a drop-down menu?but you can't type in the number of minutes you want.

While the dashboard gives you clear and accurate information, including the number of new messages, it doesn't give you tools for clearing those numbers. What I wanted was a button, like in Google Reader, that lets me quickly "mark all as read."

MultiMi's search functions work quickly and with power, delivering better results than many other programs I've seen. It can find information across any of your services, which is what makes it so useful. In an app-centric world, we need tools like MultiMi just to be able to find thing quickly. When you search for terms, a mini display in the top left corner gives you stats about the results, showing you which apps contained the most results. What a bonus!

Multitask with Multi
If you rely on social networking services to communicate, MultiMi (beta) can revolutionize the way you interact with your services for the better. It brings email, social Web services, media, calendar events, and documents into one dashboard. It indexes quickly, makes everything searchable, and has more than a few nice features, like an integrated Web browser and basic image-editing tools, that keep you in the dashboard rather than jumping from app to app. The only busy, multitasking individuals who won't jump at this app are Mac users, as it's only available for Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7). When MultiMi finally exits its beta period, hopefully the final product will contain the few tweaks and tuning it needs to make it an Editors' Choice.

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