contacts

This stellar voice-transcription application does more than search the Web or place a call in response to your spoken command. Vlingo lets you get specific, searching Google or Yahoo and updating your Facebook and Twitter status. You can also launch applications, write notes to yourself, and verbally compose a text or e-mail message.

The set-up is a little laborious, and Vlingo does have a learning curve, but the step-by-step instructions help you program a fast access key that works like a record button, and the help file is a good, easily access reminder of what you can say and do. … Read more

Flickr rolled out a big update to its inter-network content manager on Thursday afternoon. It now lets you sort by contact type, total number of photos, when you added them as a contact, and when their last upload was. This last option might be one of the most useful, since it can tell you who signed up for the service then abandoned it completely, making it easy to clear out some space.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the option to see more than a few contacts per page. The current cap is just 15 to a page, … Read more

Twitter-to-FriendFeed Contact Sync is a simple, but useful tool to find Twitter buddies who are on FriendFeed. If you're considering FriendFeed, this is a great way to automatically populate your subscriptions list with people you may already be following elsewhere.

It works by tapping into your Twitter friends list and cross-referencing your follows with FriendFeed users. By giving it your FriendFeed nickname and API key (which can be found here), it will provide you with simple one-click subscription buttons that can be clicked without taking you off the page.

In case you're hesitant about giving out your security … Read more

Wuonm has released a new speed dialer application for the iPhone called FaceCall, which is now available from the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

FaceCall is creates icons that can be used for speed dialing your contacts right from the iPhone's application launch (home) screen. Simply tapping these icons, as you would launch any application, calls one of your contact favorites.

Launching the FaceCall application itself prompts you to select a contact, then select the phone number you want associated with the icon that will be created. The app then uses Apple's Web Clips technology to create … Read more

You can't expect any application as complicated and full-featured as Microsoft Outlook to suit you perfectly right out of the box. Here are the Outlook adjustments I rely on to make the program safer and easier to use.

Send and receive mail in plain text In a previous post, I described how to make sure Outlook shows all incoming mail as plain text. Quick recap: in Outlook 2003, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options, and in the Message Handling area, check "Read all standard mail in plain text." To do the same in Outlook … Read more

Allen Stern, who writes the Web 2.0 blog Center Networks, is trying his hand at his own Web 2.0 start-up: Cloud Contacts. It's a simple service: You send it your business cards, and it enters them all into a format you can import into the contact manager of your choice. An existing scanning service company, Shoeboxed, announced a similar service Monday morning, adding it to the company's receipt scanning service.

As a guy with boxes and boxes of cards that I have never entered into any database anywhere, I find the concept attractive. The issue is … Read more

Out of the many features absent on the iPhone, I miss voice dialing and quick contact access the most.

With Windows Mobile smartphones, you can type on the keypad and then the contacts that contain the letters associated with the number will be shown. With the iPhone's built-in contacts, on the other hand, you have to either fumble through the alphabet or type the person's name in the search field, which you have to scroll all the way up to see.

I was very happy to run into Thumbtacts, a contact-management application from Kannuu. It's a simple … Read more

I spend most of my workday Alt-Tabbing between my Gmail inbox and the Outlook account on my employer's Exchange Server. The problem is, when it comes to contacts, there isn't much overlap between the two: Only a handful of Gmail addresses are also in the Outlook contacts list, and vice-versa.

Rectifying the situation takes only a few minutes. Start by moving your Outlook contacts to Gmail. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click File > Import and Export, select "Export to a file," click Next, choose either comma-separated value option, and click Next again. Browse to and … Read more

Map guide and platform company Schmap has a cool, free service that lets anyone put in a small, mobile phone-optimized contact information page on their site with just a line of code. This is in case you want to take information like your address, phone number, and e-mail address and improve the way it looks on mobile devices.

It shines on the iPhone, but has been set up to work with other smartphones, and provides a built-in map and shortcuts to call you up, with a small sticky note that goes on the top of your home page. When users … Read more