Mix-ins Add Social Networking Sites and More to Your Contacts

The AddressBook application isn't just one app - it's a combination of the core application and additional, optional apps called "mix-ins." Depending on your own personal preferences, you can download and install any of these mix-ins to integrate the social networking services of your choosing with the main AddressBook. After adding a mix-in, the app also helpfully auto-matches your phone's contacts to your friends on the social networking site you selected. The option to manually match your friends is available as well.

For the most part, this feature worked as advertised, but with Twitter there were some issues. The mix-in didn't pull in my complete friends list and when viewing the mix-in itself, contacts were listed as "null" instead of by their Twitter username. It's hard to say if this was an issue with the AddressBook itself or something that was going on with Twitter at the time, but it could point to a few kinks that need to be worked out.

Each social network has its own mix-in, but you can also find other mix-ins for social games like "AngelChess" for example. And because anyone can develop these mix-ins, the company hopes that developers will create even more to choose from in the future.

In addition, updates from your social networks will appear along with your other standard notifications in Android like new voicemails, new emails, new text messages, etc. You can finely control which networks and friend groups you receive notifications for, too, so you don't get overloaded with updates.

Similarities to Other Social Contacts Apps

At first the AddressBook application may bring to mind another mobile contacts app for iPhone - the newly launched Gist. However, although Gist's app also lets you keep tabs on what your contacts are up to through social networking integrations, Asurion's app is more of a consumer offering. There's currently no focus on integrating with CRM systems like Salesforce or even the business-focused social network LinkedIn.com.

Another great feature in the AddressBook app is "Smart Contacts." These are location-based business listings which provide quick access to maps, addresses, store hours, phone numbers and more. With these unique contacts added to your address book, you're able to find that company's nearest location with just a few taps. This feature somewhat resembles the "RingPages" feature in the upcoming iPhone app CallSpark. Those, too, are location-aware business listings which can be added to the main contact application.

Business Plan: App to be Free, Affiliate Model in the Future

For now, the company isn't as focused on their business model as they are on just increasing the adoption and the app's user base. However, they do say that the AddressBook app will remain a free download and will never include in-app ads. Instead, the company may eventually be able to generate revenue by sending traffic to the businesses included in the Smart Contacts section. Though the details of this affiliate model still need to be sketched out, it's clear that the company's goals don't involve having app owners pay for its services.

If you're an Android owner looking to try the AddressBook beta, you can download it here.

Update: The company now reports that the Twitter bug described above has been fixed.

Being able to search across multiple address books at once solves one of the biggest problems with mobile devices: you can only select one address book to sync with your device. For those who have separate email accounts and, therefore, separate address books, it can sometimes be a tough choice as to which one gets automatically copied over to your mobile device.

With CallSpark, having different address books is no longer an issue as it allows you to link up multiple accounts to its service, including Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, your native iPhone contacts, and more. In future versions, Yahoo and Windows Live Hotmail will be added, too.

Interactive Content

While a searchable address book is useful, of course, what really makes CallSpark unique is the way it integrates real-time data from cloud services into the application. Thanks to integration with Facebook and Twitter, for example, you can see your friend's latest updates before or during your call. Business users will appreciate that Salesforce.com is also one of the supported options. With Salesforce, not only can you see the latest information about your client - a handy feature to have before you make your call - you can also update their status once you've completed your phone conversation. Other services, including LinkedIn, will be added soon.

For business listings, there are even more possibilities. Customizable listings called "RingPages," are dynamically updated mini sites which provide useful links as well as location-aware information, like the business's nearby locations, for example. RingPages aren't limited to businesses either - any CallSpark user can create their own page. However, they're more likely to appeal to companies than individuals.

Further down the road, CallSpark plans to integrate with call center software, too. This could be a great way to upsell customers who call to purchase over the phone. A great example of how this could be used is Pizza Hut, a company whose order-taking process is currently outsourced. When a customer ordered a pizza, the image of what they requested could display on the screen. Then the phone could display another item like breadsticks, and ask the customer if they wanted to add that item to their order. It's easy to see how this visual imagery could help encourage more sales. (Pizza Hut is not currently partnered with CallSpark, it's just being used to illustrate the point).

CallSpark will be made available in the iTunes App Store in a couple of weeks and via the mobile web for Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre at m.callspark.com.

While it's great to see a mobile device include out-of-box functionality for contact import from webmail and social networking sites, there's still a major problem with this type of syncing: no filters. You see, most people don't want their entire contact list from any online resource dumped into their phone. The reason is simple - we just don't phone all our online friends.

Think about who you've friended on Facebook. Unless you've been extremely selective, I can guarantee you that you have more than a small handful of what can only be called casual, online acquaintances. Maybe they're people you know from around the 'net or maybe they're those old high school friends who wanted to catch up. Either way, what they're not is people who you need on speed dial.

Now think about who's in your Gmail address book. If you've been with Gmail since the beta days (oh wait, they're still in beta...ok...the private beta days), your address book there is probably over-crowded with hundreds if not thousands of random email addresses belonging to people you don't know, bots, and auto-responders. Hardly the kind of data you'd want in your phone.

And yet, on the Pre, all this data is being dumped into your device without any sort of advanced filtering going on. That would almost be OK if the phone also offered some sort of "favoriting" or filtering mechanism after the data is loaded so you could see different views of your contacts, but instead, they're just all there. Instead of a simple, compact list where it's easy to find your actual contacts, you have no choice but to start typing to find someone by name. There's simply too much data for scrolling to be worthwhile.

All-or-Nothing is Good for Nothing. Why Can't We Sync Lists?

This problem isn't limited to the Pre alone. Android pulls in all your Gmail contacts and some of the contact apps for iPhone which sync with Facebook like MyPhone+ for Facebook (iTunes URL) just dump your friend list data in its entirety, too.

This is a shame, especially considering that both Google and Facebook as well as many other webmail services offer ways to create contact lists or, as they're called in Facebook "friend lists." But why isn't there a program that lets you pick and choose which lists come into your phone? Why is it all-or-nothing?

Call, Email, or Text...What about Tweet, Wall Post, and Share?

But too much of a good thing isn't the only problem with contact management programs today. There's also the fact that they only let you communicate in traditional ways: call, text message, or email. Why don't contact managers offer features that let you send a tweet to your friend? Or post something to their Facebook wall? These new types of public communication are just as important as the old ones.

Phone calls and texts are great for private, personal chats. Emails are better for sharing info - especially attachments - and communicating with business colleagues who don't need to be bothered with small talk. But Twitter and Facebook let you share something with a friend...and also with a network. On Twitter, that's a more public type of sharing (if it's an "@" reply, that is) and on Facebook, it's somewhat public, but with a closer network of friends.

Then there's the issue of multimedia sharing. Why can't I post a video recorded with my phone to YouTube at the same time I send it to my friend's phone, or do the same for a photo and post it to flickr, MMS, or another device?

The closest application we've seen to offer this sort of functionality is Asurion's social address book, which debuted at DEMO 09. Unfortunately though, the app is limited to Android phones and is still in private beta.

Developers: Enough with the Twitter Apps, Build this Instead

With all the growth taking place in social networking sites over the past few years, the ability to incorporate the social element more deeply into our phone's contact list is an area that is crying out - perhaps even screaming - for innovation. But instead of building something useful like this, so many of today's developers seem too content to create yet another Twitter application,or even clones of ones that already exist!

Why isn't someone working on an address book application that will blow Palm Pre's "Synergy" out-of-the-water? We want to see something that makes the Pre look behind the times. We want to see something powerful and, oh, while you're at it...cross-platform too. (Cough, iPhone first please, cough). If someone out there is building this app, please let us know. We'd be the first to sing its praises.

Image credit Palm Pre: forum member retroremakes

You see, I haven't been able to actually use my contacts within Gmail for some time.

The problem stems from what is perhaps an overuse of the "Groups" feature on my part. Upon reaching a certain number of groups, a bug in the code for the Gmail contacts page prevents me from seeing the remaining groups available below a certain point on the dropdown list when I'm trying to add a contact to a group.

Here's an example (see the bottom of the groups list where it cuts off):

Because of this issue - a problem found both in Firefox and Google's own Chrome browser - the only way I could use the Contacts feature was via the hidden page.

On the standalone contacts page it works:

Without a handy URL to access this site, the only recourse was to bookmark the URL on all the home's computers. But if I ever strayed from my own machines, believe me that URL was quickly forgotten. Obviously, you can see why I cheered for the news about google.com/contacts.

Now that Google Contacts finally has a proper URL, maybe the company can focus on making the contact manager a bit more robust or even integrating it with Google Sync technology for easy import/export to your mobile devices.  That would be impressive. Until then, it's nice to just be able to access this site with ease.

(By the way, Google Apps for your Domain users have to go here: https://www.google.com/contacts/a/YOURDOMAIN.TLD - sorry!)

Called Portable Contacts, the technical spec offers a standard, interoperable way for social networks to serve up your friends lists to anyone you give permission to access them. This should allow application developers to innovate on top of your social connections much more efficiently.

we're seeing major Internet companies making contacts APIs available, such as Google's GData Contacts API, Yahoo's Address Book API, and Microsoft's Live Contacts API (with more to come). Not surprisingly though, each of these APIs is unique and proprietary. We believe this creates the ideal conditions for developing a common, open spec that everyone can benefit from.

Why is This Important?

The social web works best when it's truly social. New applications that use social sharing can be much more useful when new users can port in their existing network of friends and see who they know is already using a site. That's much better than starting cold.

These types of standardized approaches to passing that data are secure (that's good) and allow developers to write code once to use all the supporting sources of data. You've heard the old illustration about railroads? When all the railroads in the US accepted a standard size of rail, all the trains were able to travel much farther than ever before. That's where we're headed with all this information on the web. When we give it standard methods of transport, it can go further and do more than ever before.

That's a pretty big deal and it's fantastic that Google has moved to support the Portable Contacts standard. Hopefully sometime soon everyone will and then we'll wonder what took the web so long to enable social interoperability.

As noted earlier, I had the opportunity to put e-business cards to a real-world test this past week at the DEMO conference. While I found a somewhat workable solution for sending out my contact info to others, I still collected a large stack of paper business cards from the people I met. These cards had to be digitized in order for them to be of any use to me. While people with administrative assistants are fortunate to have this tiresome data entry process handled for them, those of us without are stuck doing it ourselves. We can either sit at the keyboard for hours or use a scanner. Shouldn't there be a better way?

Surprisingly, there haven't been many options for getting our paper cards to digital format outside of using a business card scanner until now. While it's true that many people use these small, portable scanners to update their email or CRM contact lists, it's hard to believe that folks are truly satisfied with this solution.

Now, scanning in a card or two by themselves is not a big deal, but after returning from a trade show or conference, you'll often have a much larger stack of cards to deal with. What before was a quick few-minutes task now requires you to carve out a much larger chunk of your day. Since you've likely been out of the office for some time, you probably have much more pressing issues than dealing with those cards upon your return. That task goes immediately to the bottom of your priority list. Eventually the cards end up in a shoebox somewhere never to be seen again.

Today, however, we have a couple of new options for dealing with this situation. The first involves a company called Shoeboxed. Primarily a service which digitizes and categorizes receipts, they now do business card scanning, too. You can mail your cards to them (they can even send you an envelope!) and they will scan them in for you. The output is provided in a format which can be imported into Outlook, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Gmail, and most other contact programs.

More recently, Shoeboxed teamed up with note taking application Evernote to provide a solution that's a must-have for any active Evernote users. Through the new partnership, you're able to send any Shoeboxed content directly to Evernote where it then becomes searchable.

Option Two: CloudContacts

For those already ingrained in Evernote, the above is a great solution, but if you're starting fresh you might be interested in a single company instead of a combination service. A new option is CloudContacts, a service create by Allen Stern of Center Networks.

Like Shoeboxed, with CloudContacts you also have the option of mailing in your cards, either with your own envelope or the company can send you one.

If you work in an office, access to things like manila envelopes and stamps or postage machines is easy, but for home workers it often still requires an extra errand to the office supplies store and the Post Office. That's why when CloudContacts announced they would now accept emailed images sent from your camera phone, it finally became a reasonable option for me. This email service starts at $4.95 per month for 20 cards and $8.95 per month for 40 cards. To use the snail-mail CloudContacts service, it's an additional $29.95 to upload up to 100 business cards, $79.95 for up to 300 cards and $124.95 for up to 500 cards. You can go with just the email-only package, though. I did both.

Via Snail Mail

The postal mail option is really no harder than stuffing the cards in an envelope and putting them in the mailbox. However, there is a piece of paper you have to print out and put in the envelope, too, and that means you'll need to keep ink in your printer. (There's another trip to the office supplies store!) Again, unless you have a fully functional home office complete with envelopes, stamps, a printer, ink, etc., the snail mail option isn't ideal.

Via Email

Instead, taking a camera phone photo and emailing it is much easier and faster. You're provided with a special email address which you can add to your contact list in your phone for speedy access. As you're out and about, you can snap photos and email them right away so you don't end up with a stack of cards at the end of the day that need to be dealt with.

There was only one problem with the email option in my case. I'm an iPhone owner and the iPhone has a terrible camera. In fact, it's downright unusable with this service. But there is a workaround for that. It's called the Griffin Clarfi case for iPhone and it was recommended by numerous people I ran into this past week. This iPhone case comes with a built-in macro lens for close-up photography, allowing you to shoot what you want in incredible detail - like business cards, for example. At only $15 (US) on Amazon, the purchase was a no-brainer.

In the meantime, though, I had to use a regular camera to take the photos. Fortunately, CloudContacts let me send in a batch instead of one at a time.

Once the photos are received and digitized, you'll receive an email from the service (from Allen himself, actually). I asked if the personal attention I received was typical and surprisingly, it is. Allen says he believes that support can make or break a company.

The CloudContacts Web Site

When you log in to CloudContacts to see your data, the initial interface is no-frills - but in a good way. It's just a list of your contacts displaying their name, company, address, and phone number. A search box sits at the top of the screen if you need to look for a specific person.

Click on the view button for any contact and you'll be taken to a page where all their information is saved, including the photo of their business card. Also on this page is a Google map showing their address, links to their info on LinkedIn and Facebook, and, if known, their IM/chat networks are provided, too.

The data entered was entirely accurate. Apparently, that's because CloudContacts isn't doing OCR (Optical Character Recognition), or so reports VentureBeat. For data to be this accurate, it's easy to assume there are human editors on the other end, but Allen won't confirm this, calling it his "secret sauce." We're curious, of course, but as long as the data remains accurate, we suppose the magic can remain a mystery.

From any contact's page or from the main page of the site, you can click "edit" to add more details to the contact info including how you know them or other personal notes. There are also links for downloading an individual vCard or printing out a single contact's info.

Importing into Your Email

Again like Shoeboxed, you entire contact list can be exported into Standard CSV format, vCard format, Highrise CSV format, or in Yahoo/Gmail Contacts CSV format. Doing so provides a file which you can then import into your preferred program. Since Gmail merges duplicate contacts upon import, you can continue to use this option every time without worries of creating multiple versions of the same contact. Other programs may vary.

In Gmail, you're also able to tag your contacts upon import by adding them to a group. I've begun to use this option to group people by business and/or where we met (CES, DEMO, etc.). But with CloudContacts, I can't categorize or tag subsets of my contact list for selective import into Gmail. That would be a great feature. (Perhaps it will be added later - Allen seems open to feedback about the service.)

Conclusion: Worth It

When the iPhone case arrives, I'll probably turn off the snail mail service - I doubt I'll ever use it again at that point. But overall, the CloudContacts service was useful and worth the money spent - especially since I was able to get a backlog of cards into the system quickly. Now if they would just do an iPhone app too, I'd have a complete solution!

Image Credit: Andrew Turner

Zentact is the latest would-be blockbuster co-founded by Eric Marcoullier, one of the key players behind the Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog and the social media ping server Gnip. We really like this new service a lot and if some of the wrinkles get worked out we expect it to be a mainstay in our everyday use of the web. An invite link to the service is below.

The Firefox extension also gives you an opportunity to add tags below the subject line of any web based email reply you send to someone. The Gmail integration is particularly graceful, but we couldn't get the Yahoo! Mail version to show up.

Once you've done that, Zentact will offer a subtle reminder whenever you visit a page around the web that contains the keywords that you used to tag any of your contacts. The attractive little pop-up window that appears will show you why the page is relevant, tell you when you last contacted that person through Zentact and give you a button to click to send your contact a link to the relevant page you found and a personal note.

It's simple, it solves a very real problem and it works reliably. We love it!

Minor Issues

Some parts of the user experience will need to be tweaked in order for Zentact to be as unobtrusive as it has the potential to be. Contact import needs serious work; asking for email passwords is unacceptable in an era of secure authorization protocols and importing my GMail contacts lead to total overload of the system. For now at least don't bulk import your contacts from email.

We'd love to see some data portability, portable contacts, managed really well here. Right now you're better off doing one-off additions of contacts to the system.

We also find the name "zentact" annoying, a coy mix of cultural appropriation and web 2.0 schmarminess - but the service is so useful we'll only give them a little bit of teasing about that.

Get Your Account Here

Zentact is rolling out slowly but the first 500 readers who click on this link will get an invite and anyone who receives an email through the system will get an invite at the bottom of the email.

In an online world of fleeting social connections, we really like what Zentact is doing. No more missed opportunities to think of someone, reach out and keep that contact alive. We expect this to become one of those apps we don't want to use the web without.

Zimbra is already available on a host of mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry. Their latest support for the iPhone 2.0 platform will help to increase their market share. While the iPhone has progressed with its support with email, documents and more, Zimbra is looking to make it easier for its users to stay synchronized regarless of the platform.

Enteprise Capabilities

Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software provides users with enterprise class features including OTA synchronization of e-mails, calendar and contacts. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software will allow iPhone users to maximize their business functions on the iPhone. Additionally, Zimbra Mobile for iPhone will enable OTA photo-sync, so photos associated with iPhone contacts will sync with the Zimbra address book as well.

Zimbra has provided numerous ways for uses to access the Zimbra Servia via the iPhone including:

• IMAP / POP - Standards based access to email only
• Connectors - Use Zimbra's Connector for iSync (Mac) or Outlook (PC) to sync address book and calendar; combined with IMAP email it is a completely native UI solution. (Network Edition only).
• Mobile Web Browser - Zimbra Web Client is optimized for Safari on the iPhone; you can take advantage of iPhone's unique browsing capabilities to access your email, address book, calendar and more.

The users interface for accessing Zimbra's services via Safari on the iPhone is gorgeous and efficient. Zimbra makes great use of the screen real estate by providing a plethora of options right from the start. The new interface for the iPhone gets even better with a navigation menu at the top of the screen and important information right below it. This minimizes the number of finger tapping you'd normally have to do with the previous design.

Off to a Good Start

Zimbra is now approaching the same area territory Google is dominating at this point. However, the new Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 is looking to be off to a good start with more than enough features available from the iPhone to keep its users happy. Users can test Zimbra Mobile for iPhone by heading to Zimbra's Hosted Demo page.

So, what, exactly is Genome, then? Well, it's not really just one thing - it's four:

1. Social Network: Genome a social network like any other. You'll have a user profile, friends, and tools that let you social with them in comfortable, natural ways.
2. Contact Manager: You'll be able to keep track of your contacts' information on Genome.
3. Instant Messenger: Genome will provide an open instant messenger that's integrated with your contacts.
4. Identity & Social Graph Provider: Genome will have an open identity policy so your Genome identity is easily sharable with other sites. That means that other sites and services can query Genome for some pieces of your personal information.

The Genome project has only been in development for three months and most of the details on how it operates, technically speaking, are being kept quiet. However, we got a look at some of their plans as well as some screenshots of the mobile app.

What Genome Is Not

Genome is not an aggregator spock.com profiles or FriendFeed. Genome can function as your central identity, not a collection of your identities out on the web nor a collection of your social web activities.

It's not a competitor to other data portability movements like Facebook Connect, MySpace's Data Availability, or Google Friend Connect. Instead, Genome will work cooperate with them to give users control over their own data. To do so, Genome will not use any closed, proprietary protocols - only open standards.

What Genome Will Let You Do

Because it will use open protocols, the goal is to let users carry their identites anywhere on the web. Updates made to those identities out on the web will make their way back to Genome instead of users having to return to Genome to edit their profiles.

You'll be able to access Genome's service from a web app, a desktop client (they have a Windows, Mac, and Linux client planned), and a mobile app. A Google Android client has already been built, too. In fact, Genome's creators are particularly focused on the mobile market and are working on real-time sync and location awareness in this area. Of course, developers will also be able to build their own web apps and clients thanks to Genome's open standards and API.

We got a sneak peek at the Android app, but be warned, the app is still very much in alpha and may change a lot prior to launch:

To deal with "noise" Genome is implementing something they're calling a "real-life relationships" model. In your real life, says co-founder Chernyshov, "you can control who knows what about you, and you can control what you know about them." Those granular relationships will be available on Genome, yet kept as simple as possible.

How You'll Use Genome (At First)

There aren't too many details on the specifics of how you will use Genome or the technical details as to how Genome operates, but we do that the first public release will only be the beginning of their effort to solve all the problems noted at the beginning of this post. The first iteration of Genome will be focused on the problem of identity management.

In the area of contact and identity management, the problems that Genome wants to solve specifically include the following: you can't import or export data on today's social networks, you can't control who sees what about you, you can't watch who knows what about you, and you can't ask a new web service to retrieve your name, email, contacts, etc. from a social network site. Well, as for that last issue, data portability is supposed to address this, but perhaps Genome's creators aren't interested in waiting for the major providers to make it work.

To start off, you'll be able to import your address book contacts and (possibly) import friends from various social networks. (They aren't sure if they will have that feature ready for the first public launch or not). However, they do plan on supporting Google Friend Connect and, further down the road, they will offer automatic contacts discovery.

Once you add a contact to Genome, it's yours - it's not locked in any way. Unlike a network like Facebook, for example, who locks in your contacts so you have to keep using their walled garden service, the data from Genome can be freely moved about the web. If you add someone to Genome then invite them to join the service, their profile will be automatically linked with the contact you've already created. The details don't need to be re-entered.

Other Issues Being Addressed

As the Genome project progresses, future versions of the service will focus more on privacy concerns, distractions, quality interactions, and advertisements. (More details can be found on this post about Genome.) How these issues will be dealt with is currently under wraps.

Privacy: Privacy levels will be set up to mirror real-life relationships: spouse or significant other, family, best friend, friend, buddy, colleague, business partner, high school acquaintance, contact, etc. Human relationships have detailed nuances - social networks should, too.

Distractions: Social networks today are bogging us down with messages, invitations, pokes, and friend requests. Some of these matter, some of these waste our time, but how can we pay attention to only the really important things? Genome plans to address this.

Quality Issues: The more "friends" you have, the less rich the interactions and the relationships you maintain with your friends on your social networks. Interactions become one-way, more similar to RSS than to real relationships.

Ads: Today's ads are often irrelevant, usually unwanted, and sometimes even inappropriate. Even targeted ads seem to miss the mark. If Genome truly has a solution for this problem, that will be extremely impressive.

Conclusion

At the moment, Genome sounds almost too good to be true - a social networking service that solves all our problems? Nevertheless, it's certainly intriguing. If it can really do what it proposes to do, then it's worth signing up for (sign-up is here).

Facebook Requests: Dan Zen