contacts

Aries Personal Organizer Software is a very basic program that allows users to keep track of their schedule and contacts. Although the program is not particularly sophisticated, it's a nice choice for users who need a simple program of this sort.

The program's interface is plain and somewhat dated-looking, but it's very intuitive. The program's features are organized into tabs for tasks, contacts, dates and events, and notes. Given that the program comes in a weird mint green color, we were happy to see that the color of the interface can be customized. The program's … Read more

Bump is a free and fairly ingenious app that makes exchanging contact information (and now photos, too) as easy as sharing a fist-bump with a fellow iPhone or iPod Touch user. Bump's streamlined interface is simple: you just open Bump and indicate whether you'd like to share a photo (any image on your device) or your contact information (whether your entire contact card, or any combination of your phone number, e-mail, photo, and address). You then "bump" hands together with another Bump user, and the app uses your device's location information and accelerometer to match … Read more

Gmail has long had a feature that automatically suggests and fills out the name of people you've corresponded with. On Tuesday night, the service got a tweak that makes that process easier--it's also likely to be second-nature to Microsoft Outlook users.

Now clicking on the link next to the "to" field pulls up Gmail's contact list manager, where you're able to very quickly sort through your contacts, or anyone you've e-mailed, and pick the ones you want to include in the message. The same goes for removing anyone; you just have to click … Read more

Avignon Concept provides is a fantastic tool for organizing practically every aspect of life. With simple layout and fantastic results, users will love having their entire lives coordinated into one program.

The program's interface was surprisingly simple, considering all of the elements it attempts to combine. With large icons for organizing media, contacts, and calendars, users can easily navigate through the program. Customization was equally simple, with intuitive fields to fill in and easily retrievable data. Users can most likely skip the Help file. The program divides itself into categories for books, music, movies, contacts, finance, documents, to-do, and … Read more

Sales managers will appreciate how this add-on exploits Outlook's powerful Contacts feature as a basis for managing existing customers and adding new ones.

Some apps adopt the typical e-mail client interface to lend a sense of familiarity and ease of use to its functions; this one adopts the client itself. If you use and like Outlook, you'll be happy. If you rely on another e-mail client, you won't be so happy. SalesOutlook installs an unobtrusive minitoolbar to Outlook's existing toolbar. It provides quick access to the add-on's tools and features and simply folds into the … Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I described how to sync contacts between Outlook, Gmail, and your iPhone. The program missing from this contacts mega-merge was Thunderbird (download for Windows | Mac), and for good reason. Mozilla's free e-mail program is not particularly contact-friendly.

The first time I attempted to use Mozilla Thunderbird's import function to bring my Gmail contacts into the client e-mail application, I was seriously disappointed with the results. Most of the contact information was squished into a single nondescript field for each record. The few fields that did make the conversion were incomplete. The entire process was pretty worthless, overall.

Then I found the free Zindus add-on for Thunderbird. The program brings a subset of contact fields from Google and Zimbra into Mozilla's free e-mail program. For Google, the fields imported include the contact's name, primary and secondary e-mail addresses, phone numbers, IM names, company, title, and notes. (I didn't test the program with Zimbra.)

After you download and install Zindus, a "Zindus" option is added to Thunderbird's Tools menu. Clicking it opens the Zindus Configuration Settings dialog box where you're presented with a handful of contact-sync options, including a Sync Now button.

… Read more

Frequent mail merging can result in multiple entries for a single contact in your address book. This simple add-on removes the duplicates--and the headaches they can cause--with just a single click.

1-Click Duplicate Delete for Outlook is an add-on for Microsoft's popular e-mail client. It loads an easy-to-spot button onto the toolbar for the client's interface. This little app performed nicely in our tests. It quickly scanned our contacts and removed multiple entries, prompting us with the results of its search. Removing the duplicates was a snap. The lack of a Help file or explanation for the add-on'… Read more

It is great that your contact list can immediately sync up with your Google and Facebook accounts, downloading and collecting a huge host of valuable information that is a huge time saver. There are drawbacks though. For anal retentive people like myself, it can quickly become a quagmire to keep organized. The good news is that there is no real good reason to work at keeping it organized since the universal search works so well. Still, it bugs me a little bit.

Part of that is the inability to remove Facebook friends from your contact list. I can understand why … Read more

OpenContacts is a contact management program that has many useful features. Unfortunately, the unintuitive interface makes the program somewhat frustrating to use.

Is OpenContacts impossible to master? Not at all. But contact management programs tend to be pretty intuitive, allowing users to perform basic functions like adding contacts right off the bat. OpenContacts requires more work, more clicking around and skimming the Help file. The interface, made up of multiple little windows and plenty of drop-down menus, does not make it particularly easy to add or edit information. That said, with a bit of experimentation, most users should be able … Read more