Tag Archives: address-book

Turning on Address Book syncing to Gmail on Mac OS X 10.5.3 without an iPhone or iPod touch

June 3rd, 2008

Prior to even upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5.3 I had heard about this feature, from my co-worker Kyle Slattery on Twitter, that you could sync your Mac OS X Address Book to your Gmail contacts.

“Sigh, I was excited about Google contact syncing in 10.5.3, but it turns out it’s only for iPhone and iPod touch users. Lame.” — Kyle Slattery on Twitter.

I didn’t care too much about this at the time because, well, I have an iPhone and I figured I’d have the feature once I updated to the latest version of Leopard.  But then I got to thinking.  Why would Apple, or Google for that matter, want this feature to be limited in such a way? Turns out, even the daring John Gruber thought the same thing.

I have no idea.  But such as limitations are, someone took the time to figure out a way to hack it.  And so now it is up on Lifehacker and all of you out there without iPhones and/or iPod touches can rejoice.

Source: Lifehacker: Enable Google Contact Sync Without an iPhone or iPod Touch.

In response to: PHP, MySQL, and Contact Management: Contacts 0.1 by Jon Christopher

October 22nd, 2007

How is this for a long title? My friend Jon Christopher is asking for some feedback on a little side project he is working on. I thought I’d duplicate my comment I made on his post in hopes that if any one that reads this would be interested in following this project too. So if you have any interest at all in providing feedback, helping Jon with his project, or keeping up-to-date with his “contacts” application – watch his site.

After reading through your list of feature requests I’m not so sure I have a ton to add at the outset. But here are some things I’d like to see added “long term” (and may even take the time to help you with should I get a few free moments):

1. Export to vCard
You can setup a permalink per contact (an address card if you will) then just push the URL of said card to Technorati’s Contact Service (eg. my vCard).

2. Option to show and/or link to maps service.
Typically a link would be created to open the current address in Google/Yahoo! Maps or Mapquest. However now that Google Maps can be embedded easily I think it’d be a nice addition.

3. iPhone version
Perhaps this is in your plans with the ‘mobile version’ you mentioned. The iPhone could easily navigate the current layout (since it has a full version of mobile Safari running Webkit) – but creating a simple look up and entry point for this application for the iPhone would be killer. I could see companies or family sharing a contacts database this way.

4. hAtom for the hell of it?
The main reason I think it’d be cool to add hAtom is so that coworkers or family members could subscribe to changes found in the database. If someone’s number is changed and/or a new contact is added to the database by one of the applications users – all other users would be notified via a feed.

5. Data import / export / share.
Obviously having some way to import my current address book would be killer. Also, exporting for backup or moving to another platform (or just into my address book) would be killer too. Exporting into vCard per card is ok but if we could have one big vCard with all contacts that’d be neat). This could be done pretty easily with a large list of all contacts on a single sheet marked up with hCard. Though that probably wouldn’t scale too hot.

Sharing though – is something I think would be really neat. It’d be neat to create a community around this project and allow people to share their contact information through this system automatically importing anyone that shares their information into a new “company” called “shared contacts”. Quick and easy way to get in contact with other people that use this app. Just a thought.

6. AIM / Skype contact information
I suppose support for Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, Gmail, etc would be a plus. But for me AIM and Skype information is crucial.

This isn’t all – I will have more. Now you have wanting to help you out!!

I’m leaving comments off on this post because all discussion surrounding this project should be done on his site.

Syncing bliss with the iPhone

July 5th, 2007

Something I was worried about with Eliza and I both getting iPhones was syncing. She has data, I have data, we have data! How would I be able to manage keeping all of this data in sync between our two computers and the iPhones without forcing her to only sync her iPhone with my computer?

A few things came into play in order to make this happen – but out of the box I’m very happy with how the iPhone handles syncing. Unlike the iPod, and correct me if I’m wrong, the iPhone allows itself to be connected to more than one computer. Have you ever had an iPod yell at you when you connect it to another computer? The iPhone doesn’t. Which is beautiful! So now my iPhone syncs only with my computer whereas Eliza’s syncs with mine for music and her’s for mail, calendar, address book, and photos. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

However, this introduces a small wrench into the system. Syncing our iPhones separately would mean that we would have to manage two different address books and calendars. The address book is a non-issue since Eliza and I, for the most part, managed two very separate contact lists. The number of business contacts that I have makes it so that Eliza would not want to sync with my address book outright. I, on the other hand, want all of my contact’s information available to me all the time.

So we’re left with the calendar. How do I sync Eliza’s calendar with mine, mine with hers, and both of ours with our iPhones? Turns out this is made very easy using a utility called Spanning Sync. So here is how I do keep all of this information up-to-date between both of our computers, the Web, and our respective iPhones.

Syncing the iPhone

Syncing bliss. (made with Skitch)

The first step is to create the calendars that you think you need within iCal. I decided to create two calendars per person and one joint calendar for our use. So we both have a personal calendar and a work calendar, and then we share a family events calendar. Eliza maintains the family events calendar so that I don’t have to (thanks babe!).

The second step is to recreate those same calendars within Google Calendar. I could have easily set it up so that Spanning Sync used the same Google Calendar account, but I wanted to keep our two accounts separate for other reasons and I really think this is the better option if Eliza wanted to go into Google Calendar and subscribe to things like the Green Bay Packers season schedule or something.

Once you have this completed you tell Spanning Sync, on both computers, to sync the iCal calendars that you created with their online representatives within Google Calendar. This will pull your information from iCal every hour, day, or week and sync it with Google Calendar making them both up-to-date.

The final step is to share my calendars with Eliza through Google Calendar and share her’s with mine. Then, ask Spanning Sync to sync those calendars too with offline representatives within iCal.

Once I had this workflow down, and have tested it, I have been really, really happy with the results. If I didn’t explain this too well I’m sorry – it gets a bit confusing but if you have any questions you can leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them. Or, if you have any tips on how I can improve this workflow – I’d like those as well.