When you receive an email from someone you often know nothing more than their name and their email address. But once you have installed the Rapportive browser extension you will be able to view a wealth of extra information in a handy sidebar that sits to the right of email messages where advertisements are usually to be found. The extension is available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox and is a great way to add great new options to Gmail.

Rapportive looks up information about a contact on various social networks including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and uses this to provide you with a neat profile that tells you much more about them than you might ordinarily know. By linking up your own Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Contacts accounts, the profiles can be made even more detailed and even more useful.

The sidebar includes an image of your contact where possible as well as information about where they are located. Links are provided to any social networking accounts they may have along with quick shortcuts to allow you to send messages or view previous correspondence. There is also space left for you to record notes about a contact and this is useful for recording thoughts and ideas as well as keeping tabs on important dates.

At its heart, Rapportive is a very simple browser extension, but the information is makes readily available to you is incredibly useful. It is also very well presented and the fact that it hides irritating advertisements is another string to its bow. This is one contact management tool that you will wonder how you ever lived without.

Note that this is Rapportive for Chrome.