How About a Central Contact Repository?
It's time someone solved the problem of the Amazing Fragmenting Address Book. Unless, of course, someone already has and I just don't know about it. Which is certainly possible.
This morning, an acquaintance sent me an email informing me of her new email address. I use gMail, so I was able quickly to update her record in my Contacts list in that program. As I edited her record, I realized that gMail would also allow me to have a full address book with addresses, phones, etc., if I wanted to use it that way. I'm not sure what value that would have, given that all I use my Google Contacts for is email, but the realization triggered a cascade of queries.
I have my Address Book from Apple which was always my main repository for such information until I started using gMail and it was easier to store peoples' email addresses in my email program. (Yeah, I realize I could have stayed with Apple Mail and had cross-integration there, but Mail just isn't as good as gMail in a number of ways. Besides, I do like the idea of having my contact info in the Cloud.) The Apple Address Book is where I keep mailing addresses, company information, and miscellaneous notes about people.
Then I have Skype, which I use for at least 90% of my phone conversations. Guess where peoples' phone numbers are most likely to be current? Yep.
Finally (I think), I have IM contact identifiers in my Adium application, which is my current choice for a multi-protocol chat client. And I spend a lot of time on chat, from which I derive a great deal of value and convenience.
Now it would be interesting to contemplate a means for synchronizing all of those applications' data together, but my guess is that's a very messy and difficult task. But it does seem to me that it should be possible to solve the problem by:
- Establishing a central repository of all contact info in the Cloud
- Expecting these individual apps to obtain their contact info from that source when and as needed.
AIM, e.g., appears to store all of my AOL IM clients on a server so that when I open a new copy of the chat client on a computer I've never used before, the buddies list populates automatically. I assume other IM clients have similar features.
I think Skype does the same thing (though I'm less certain of that and haven't actually asked or investigated).
What I'd really like is the ability to have all my apps draw from a central repository just the data they need to populate their subsets of contact info (emails for gMail, IM handles for Adium, phone numbers and Skype user IDs for Skype, etc.). Then I just maintain that one database and all the others draw from it as needed. They could keep a local copy, of course, and check for updates at intervals.
Of the services I know about, Plaxo seems best positioned to do this, but their technology is strictly push; if someone I know updates their contact info through Plaxo, I get a notice. But there is no API for me to connect to even if I wanted to write a program to do this, which I don't necessarily want to do.
Pointers anyone? If you don't want to join my blog and post a response here, you can email me: dan at danshafer dot com.
