contact

One of the most powerful data sets on your iOS device is your list of contacts. Many of the amazing features the iPhone and iPad have are predicated on the information available from your address book. To help get the most out of your iDevice experience, you can use Twitter to beef up your contacts.

iOS 5 added quite a bit of Twitter integration, including the ability to automatically retrieve usernames and profile photos for any of your contacts who have Twitter accounts.

Essentially, if your contact has an e-mail address associated with a Twitter account, you can choose to … Read more

How many contact lists do you have? A new iPhone app from Xobni unifies your contact lists into one app (already available for Android), helping you quickly find contact information from a number of sources.

Smartr Contacts for iPhone (Free) unifies your contacts by scanning your iPhone contact list and e-mail contacts, then grabbing information from social sites like Facebook and Twitter, to merge all the available data into a searchable supercharged contact list.

You start by adding your Gmail account, then social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Once connected, Smartr Contacts goes to work tying your contact data … Read more

Eye drops are so 1.0. Not only can they be messy and inconvenient to apply, they deliver medicine to treat dryness and other issues in imprecise volumes so quickly that they need to be reapplied every few hours.

And for those applying eye drops after laser eye surgery--when the eyes are especially tender--they can be a real pain.

Which is why researchers at the University of Florida are working to design contact lenses already helpful in protecting the eyes post-surgery that can extend the release time of anesthesia to help with this post-surgery pain.

The trick, chemist Anuj Chauhan … Read more

WHOIS is a protocol that lets users query databases to find out the ownership information behind Web domains. WhoIs is a simple program that lets users perform this task, though we're not sure what the point of the program is when you can get the same information from any number of Web sites. If you do want a program dedicated to WHOIS queries, though, we suppose that WhoIs is a decent choice.

The program's interface is quite plain, and not entirely intuitive. A text box lets users enter the domain they want to search for, and we liked … Read more

Apple's iOS 5.0.1 seems to have created a glitch with the Contacts app for certain users, according to various sources and several posts on the Apple Support Forums.

Startup Foundry founder Paul Hontz reported late last week that after updating to 5.0.1, the iPhone was no longer able to associate address book contacts with other apps. Opening the Contacts app would display all the right names. But using the iMessage texting app or even making a phone call would fail to remember the name of a contact and just display the person's phone number.… Read more

After creating a group of contacts in Address Book, you can send e-mails to its members by simply typing the name of the group in the address field of an e-mail message, and Mail will fill in a list of the e-mail addresses of its members.

When Mail does this, by default the primary e-mail address for the contacts in the group will be used, so if a member has multiple e-mail addresses then the first one listed will be used. However, this default behavior can be changed by using Address Book's distribution list editor (available in the Edit … Read more

Med-e-Forms specializes in PDF-based document solutions for health care providers, but it also offers a range of free Excel workbooks, including Free Excel Contact Appointment Scheduler. This free spreadsheet template for Microsoft Excel automatically schedules appointments based on your contacts list and office hours. It keeps track of contact data, referrals, and the date, time, and length of appointments. It's optimized for physicians or health care providers in small, private practices, but lots of businesses can use it, too, and even customize it to their own needs.

Opening this workbook in Excel didn't exactly dazzle us--more like daze--but … Read more

Siri is a by-the-book type of app; if a word is spelled a certain way, but is pronounced completely different, Siri doesn't care. Similar to how it handles punctuation, Siri will read or write using the exact information available to it.

… Read more

Among the many new features in iOS 5 for Apple's mobile devices, one seemingly small addition will make sharing your life in fewer than 140 characters much easier.

Integrated Twitter features are now an option in most of the main iOS apps, and on first use, you'll see just how easy it is to send tweets from your browser, photo app, YouTube, Contacts, or Maps. iOS 5 doesn't come standard with a complete Twitter experience that lets you browse tweets as well, but during your first setup you'll find a handy button for downloading Twitter's … Read more