How Do You Manage Your Contacts and Address Book?

April 26th, 2007

I’ll admit it, I have no system for keeping track of contacts beyond saving and archiving old email so I can look up someone’s contact information. Normally I feel like I’m on top of ways to use your computer for business and organization, but for some reason I’ve never cracked the code on contact management. So why not ask for some advice?

I’m curious as to how people are keeping track of contacts, but also how they organize them. My specific situation is that I have both personal and business contacts to track, and would like to somehow sync them so they are available to Thunderbird at home, on the web from anywhere, Outlook at work, and Outlook on my Blackberry.

Is this possible? I’ve used Yahoo Address Book a few years back, sort of use Outlook’s address book, at one point had everyone I replied to automatically added to Thunderbird’s (what a mess that ended up being), and know that there must be some decent online apps for this. Any help?




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Entry Filed under: Personal

8 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Cristian  |  April 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    I’m using Portable Apps and I carry my USB stick everywhere with me. I can use the same installation of Thunderbird – which I use for storing contacts – on every computer (both at home and at work).

  • 2. Pat McCarthy  |  April 26th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    Thanks Christian, I’m not sure I like the idea of carrying around a USB stick everywhere, but I may give that a shot.

  • 3. J-Ro  |  April 26th, 2007 at 5:49 pm

    I know 37 signals just came out with a contact manager called Highrise. I haven’t used it myself yet, and I’m not sure if it can do all that you want, but it might be worth checking out. http://www.highrisehq.com/

  • 4. Adam Audette  |  April 27th, 2007 at 5:16 am

    I use ACT and find it essential to keep track of contacts, appointments, and tasks. I actually use it as a checklist for things I’m working on. After the initial setup (which was time consuming) it’s now saving me loads of time.

    I sync it with my Moto Q via CompanionLink – they may have something similar for the Blackberry. It’s nice to be on the road and have the tasks / appointments / contacts with me. Reminds me of all the things I don’t have time to do :-)

  • 5. Pat McCarthy  |  April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am

    Thanks for the tips everyone.

  • 6. Mark McLaren  |  May 2nd, 2007 at 8:20 am

    Pat,
    I’m not sure where to post this question, so I’ll start here. I was going to email you about it, but I know you are busy with other things – like earning a living! – and I thought possibly other readers would like to know your answer, as well.

    I’m working on a new WordPress website for mcbuzz.com, trying to hammer out some of the organizational stuff like categories, menus, etc. You do a really nice job with this on your blog.

    Here’s the question. I subscribe to your RSS feed via Feedburner e-mail and you usually have several tags or categories assigned to a post there. For the May 1 post on Clicky, you tagged it with: clicky, feedburner, RSS and Web Analytics. But in the email, these are just links to the Clicky post on your blog. Of these tags, “Web Analytics” is the only one in use as a category on your blog.

    So… what is the relationship between the four tags in the Feedburner email and the category on your blog? How does Feedburner “know” about the four tags? Do you have to add those manually?

    Thanks!!

  • 7. Pat McCarthy  |  May 2nd, 2007 at 10:12 am

    Ah, good question Mark. I have a plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior that allows you to add multiple tags beyond the categories managed by Wordpress. The reason for those extra tags is it then shows up for those tags in Technorati and any other blog search engines that use tags.

  • 8. Cale Bruckner  |  May 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    Hi Pat,

    Microsoft Outlook + Plaxo http://www.plaxo.com

    Outlook is my primary work e-mail client and contact manager. I use Google Calendar for calendaring. I connect Outlook w/ Plaxo (it’s free) and I can access an on-line copy of my contacts on plaxo.com from anywhere. I can also add or modify contacts on Plaxo and the changes sync w/ Outlook.

    Cale

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