Contact Managers suck Jul17 '08

I've never been enthused about contact manager applications - for example, within Gmail, or on my iPhone. I just can't get excited about organizing my contacts.

I think this is because, contact managers applications, by nature, are full of flaws. The larger your contact list grows, the more confusing it is to pull information from.

This is because the term "contact" is too vague. A "contact" could be a person, a place, a web service, etc.

You may not have all the information for a contact, so every contact appears differently. Some have a complete first and last name. Some just have a first name. Some just have an email address. Some are a name of a place, not a person.

Sorting all that information is never accurate, because there's never one field that is always filled in.

Duplicates are easy to create, since contact apps usually don't require any fields to be totally unique. For example, my Gmail contact list has numerous duplicates - the same person under different email addresses.

Some contacts I don't even recall how or why they are my contact. Perhaps I emailed the person once, three years ago, and never talked to them again. Should they still be in my contact list?

Then there's the problem of syncing. I have a contact list on my phone, another one on Gmail, and probably a few more elsewhere. None of them contain all of my contacts, but all of them contain some.

Some contact apps are web-based, providing me access anywhere with an internet connection. Others are client based, meaning I need to be using that device or machine. Unfortunately, I'm never near the one I need.

The emergence of social networks hasn't helped either. For every social network I am a part of, I have a different list of "friends" or "contacts." If I need to touch base with a particular person, first I have to remember which network I know that person from.

Altogether this leads to an organizational nightmare, further complicating the concept of "keeping in touch."

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to this problem, or any ideas on how to improve it.

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Here, here. You've nailed it perfectly. I've been thinking for a long time about a "contacts" system that is portable from one application to anoth ... Read more.

matthom is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

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