contacts

Robert Scoble couldn't do it, but Windows Live can.

Microsoft's Web-app division announced Tuesday that it has partnered with five social networks--LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo, and yes, Facebook--on a new project to facilitate address book portability. The partner social networks have agreed to use the Windows Live Contacts API so that members can import Windows Live contacts to their respective sites, as part of the new data-portability strategy that Microsoft outlined at its Mix conference earlier this month.

In return, Microsoft has launched Invite2Messenger, a new service for users of those social networks so that they … Read more

Wired's Epicenter blog reported Thursday that rumors point to contact-management-service-turned-social-network Plaxo as Google's latest shopping purchase. Well, maybe.

The report is extremely thin, and very little detail is given except that the buying price is under $200 million and the buyer is "most likely" Google. Representatives from Plaxo said that the company does not comment on matters related to mergers and acquisitions.

It would make sense: Plaxo has been a loyal and vocal member of Google's OpenSocial initiative, and contact management is one thing that Google Apps really hasn't nailed yet. But Plaxo, like … Read more

Oh sure, anyone can assign a photo face to a contact on their Windows Mobile phone. But how many can also resize images, associate tasks with a contact, and send text messages from their digital black book?

If you guessed "anyone using the application named above," give yourself a gold star. For about twenty bucks, PhotoContacts for WindowsMobile and Pocket PC rolls your contact list into a stylish wrapper with better people skills than your default address book. Could this application be for you? Check out pros and, yes, a few cons, in this First Look video before … Read more

CardScan Personal is a compact business card scanner paired with powerful (though Windows-only) contact management software that makes short work of transforming a stack of business cards into useful information.

The 7.6-ounce scanner measures 4.8 inches wide, 3.3 inches deep, and 1.5 inch high, so it won't take up much room in your bag. (The device even comes with a carrying pouch that keeps the scanner and USB cable together.) According to the company, the CardScan can scan a monochrome card in 5 seconds and a polychrome card in a few more seconds. That's … Read more

It's no shock that contact management site Plaxo has been a fierce advocate of data portability. As a result, it's not particularly surprising that the service continues to expand browser-to-desktop application functions: on Wednesday, the company announced that the latest version of its downloadable Mac client will sync the Plaxo Pulse social network to Apple's Address Book software. This comes in the wake of an announcement that data from Pulse--which aggregates feeds from social media sites like Flickr and Twitter into a common profile--would also sync with Microsoft Outlook.

The new version of Plaxo's Mac client, … Read more

Open-source messaging service Funambol has a new contact-management app for iPhones that's the bee's knees. It works both as a Web app and a native application for users with iPhones that have been jailbroken and have the Installer.app loaded on their system. In its current state, a Funambol-registered iPhone can slurp up all your iPhone contacts and make them available for backup and editing online. You can then sync over the air at any time, to either recover contacts to your phone, or add news ones you've created using Funambol's Web-based contact manager.

In addition … Read more

Whether you're in college, work a 40-hour work week, or are a stay-at-home parent, keeping track of everything in your life is never easy. Whether it's meetings, appointments, keeping track of contacts, or even what time to pick up your daughter after soccer practice, without some help, it's difficult to keep track of it all.

Fortunately, there's a whole genre of software dedicated to reining in all your appointments, contacts, and important responsibilities. Personal Info Managers are designed to keep all your important information in one place. You can keep track of recurring meetings and appointments, special dates like birthdays and anniversaries, and contact information for friends, coworkers, and business clients. Though it takes some time to enter all this information, once your Personal Info Manager is up to speed, you'll never have to worry about forgetting a phone number or being late to a meeting again.… Read more

A recent Read/WriteWeb post pointed me to a new Pew/Internet Survey that suggests that "teens" (defined in this study as 12- to 17-year-olds) may view contact by people they don't know as a "cost of doing business" in the online social network environment.

The Pew survey found that about a third of online teens had been contacted online by someone with no connection to them or their friends. Overall, studying all online teens, 7 percent of them had experienced stranger contact that made them feel scared or uncomfortable.

It is important to note that when you look at group of teens who had been contacted by a stranger, nearly of a quarter of them say they felt scared or uncomfortable. Girls were more likely to feel this way, 27 percent compared with 15 percent of boys.

What do these results mean for parents? Social networks are becoming the norm for kids and teens, and "networking" means meeting new people. The question is always how to help kids learn to safely negotiate the public contact that comes into our home through online exposure.… Read more

So in our excitement with the iPhone my friends and I all picked the "strum" ringtone on the iPhone. It's sunny, happy and seems to sound the best on the iPhone speakers. I think it's appealing to us since it sounds like the ads. With that, it's pretty confusing when our iPhones ring. A typical conversation: "Is it yours?" "No, it's my phone," followed by, "Oh, wait, no it really is my phone!" We're such geeks.

You can see where confusion lies. But this highlights the limited … Read more