Xobni, the popular and highly rated plugin for Microsoft Outlook has today announced the Xobni Gadget Platform and Store, which offers apps that add on to your add-on. With close to 20 big-name partners, including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Translate, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and so on, Xobni hopes to boost your productivity by souping up your Outlook inbox to yet another level.

To give you an idea of some of the platform's possibilities, the Evernote gadget puts the popular note-taking service's functionality into the Xobni sidebar. With it, you can view and take personal notes on a contact right from your inbox. It could be a hugely convenient tool for those who don't want to interrupt their e-mail workflow by firing up another program.

While Outlook end users are sure to be excited by the new menu of power-ups available, the news also has huge implications on developers, since the platform is based on the OpenSocial API. In fact, it's the first desktop-based OpenSocial container. "This platform also gives developers an easy way to reach hundreds of millions of Outlook users, while using the same code for Gmail," said Jeff Bonforte, Xobni CEO.

This not only opens up a whole new market for developers, it also lets enterprises create private gadgets for their specific workflows and e-mail needs, which could make many lives a lot easier.

Xobni Gadget Store offers both free and paid gadgets ($9.99/year with 30 day free trial). You can also find Xobni as an extension for Gmail (still in beta) as well as Xobni on Blackberry. The company has announced plans to release for iPhone and Android within the next few months.