Staying in Sync

Phone Number Formatting Feature in GIST

2011-12-29T14:29:34Z

It is no secret that as a current Blackberry user, one of my favorite CRM services is Gist, acquired earlier this year by Research in Motion.

In fact, for those of you who may have seen the leaked photos floating around the Internet, the address book/contact list in the new BB OS 10 (which will power all future Blackberry Devices, including the current Playbook), is based on thieir technology.

Recently, I decided to reset my GIST account and see what changes, if any, has been made to the process for new users. One feature in particular caught my eye

As I have mentioned numerous times, one of the main causes of duplication, or corruption, of contact import/synchronization is due to poor cross-platform formatting and mapping. This feature is a major leap forward towards reducing future issues, and I applaud GIST for implementing it.

Unfortunately, they didn't go all the way with their implementation, which, as it turns out, leads to unexpected and unwanted results.

In the long run, the GIST CRM database is the equivilant of a "dumb terminal". It pulls information from multiple sources (ie- Blackberry, Google Contacts, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc...), an puts it into a single central contact repository.

That is both its strength (because you don't lose any data) and its weakness (forced to clean up each contact manually, by hand).

The only proactive feature is the occassional notification of duplicate contacts, but all that does is merge them together (all the fields).

Whether the sources are multiple services or duplicate contacts, there is one major issue that is consistent: even if the field content(s) match, the field name(s) may not.

When that happens, since GIST is a central repository, it simply duplicates the information within the contact itself.

For example, the following contact has their cell phone labeled "Mobile" on the Blackberry, but "Mobile Phone" in Google:

Instead of showing as 2 distinct fields, they are appear as duplicates.

The only way to know that they fields were distinct is in the EDIT mode:

This is why I happen to like scrubly.com [SPONSOR]. While it is not an on-line address book, or a CRM, it does have the most advanced, and sophisticated De-duplication tools to clean up contacts that I have even seen. Regretfully, no matter how accurately or detailed I scrub my address book, even if I keep 2 different services in sync with each other, it won't mean anything as long as those same 2 sources have different field names.

Some of you might be asking yourselves, if the Blackberry and Google Contacts are in sync, why connect both to GIST? Excellent question. The reason is because there are some fields on both clients that don't map at all to the other. Therefore, if I want a whole consolidated picture of a contact in GIST, I, unforuntately, have to pull from both sources.

Until GIST resolves this, there are 3 possible solutions:

Manually change every contact by hand
Leave them as is
Choose to only import from one source or the other, not both

Flossing CSV Address Book File

2011-11-16T23:14:12Z

No matter how many different services are there.

No matter how simple an automated software appears

No matter how many duplicates are removed.

Nothing. Aboslutely nothing, can replace a good old fashion cleaning with a standard Outlook formatted comma separated value (CSV Windows) file and a basic spreadsheet program like Excel or Google Docs.

Think of it as using floss and tooth picks to really get through the address book to fix all those nooks and cranies.

The simple, yet detailed, spreadsheet view shows contacts and their information displayed in a way that no other address book client can offer, which can then be quickly edited

Easily track down improperly formatted fields
See NOTES that contain addresses, Birthdays, screennames, etc...
Discover Home Addresses that should be Business Addresses

So take a moment. Export your address book into the Outlook CSV file. Import it into Outlook and look it over. I bet you'll be surprised at what you see.

Using .ics URLs To Cross-Subscribe Event Feeds Between Yahoo and Google Calendars

2011-11-14T17:21:41Z

The other day I was approach by a client who wanted to connect to Yahoo calendar with their Google calendar.

Unfortunally it's not a simple as it sounds.

The only way to share these calendars with each other is using the ICS URL file protocol, which is, regretfully, read-only.

In other words, events imported through these calendar feeds cannot be edited or removed, nor can new events be added.

For example, let's start off with importing the Google Calendar into Yahoo.

Google calendars can be shared with, quite literally, almoast any service using the ics/ical URL:

To subscribe to this particular Google calendar in Yahoo:

To do the reverse, ie- share your Yahoo Calendar with your Google Account:

If you want/need bi-directional synchronization with Google calendar you need to use a protocol called CalDav. If you're not using Google apps sync on your desktop, this is how Outlook, iCal and lighting all connect to google calendar, offering bi-directional access.

To my knowledge, & from my research, I cannot find any documentation or findings for using Google or Yahoo as an CalDav client, only as a server.

The only work around. I could find is to create an event in one calendar and send an invite to the other.

Other work arounds include using third-party services (everything from a smartphone to something like an Exchange Server).

How Ease the Transition of Moving from MobileMe to iCloud and Alternative Solutions

2011-10-26T15:56:06Z

While it's no secret that I'm not a fan of Apple's closed eco-system, that is not to say that I cannot acknowledge their dominanace in this industry to the average consumer.

Unfortunately, from .mac to MobileMe to iCloud, Apple just can't seem to get it right. The problem is that none of these services are compatible with each other, forcing users to start all over again from scratch every time.

Since I don't own an iPhone or a Mac, I'd like to thank the good folks over at Gizmodo for providing users with a step-by-step guide on how to make the transition as painless as possible, which, needless to say, is still painful and time-consuming.

To those of you willing to take the pludge, just click on the link below:

Unraveling the MobileMess of the MobileMe to iCloud Migration

However, I would just to remind everyone that this chaos is why this blog exists. I want to give you alternatives that don't rely on proprietary formats. Apple may make the process simpler, but that doesn't mean it's the best solution. Personally, I'd recommend going with any of the following alternatives...

For syncing contacts:

Google Sync (built-in to iOS)
Soocial.com
Plaxo.com
my.funambol.com

For syncing calendars:

Google Sync
my.funambol.com
Or a cloud-based application service like Tungle

For storing photos:

Flickr
Picasa
my.funambol.com

For playing cloud-based music:

Google Music
Amazon's Cloud Player
SugarSync
Spotify

Yes, I realize these solutions are not the "all-in-one" that Apple promises with iCloud, but they do give you control over your own data; and that's what I'm here to help you achieve.

Soocial Gets Faster, Not Better

2011-10-14T19:54:28Z

I've been a fan of soocial.com for quite a while now, but I never really thought that it was living up to it's potential. Depending on how many contacts I had, it seemed slighly sluggish and looked like something pre-2009.

BUT, it still holds the distinction of being the only service I can find that will sync Hotmail contacts with Yahoo contacts with Gmail contacts with Blackberry contacts with iPhone contacts with Google Hosted Domain contacts. For that reason alone, I have had long held a fascination with their service.

Somehow, I missed the announcement that, on October 4th, they launched a newly revamped interface. {Probably because I think of Soocial as set-it-and-forget it back-end, rarely requiring a need to return.} Anyway, according to their blog

Code has also been optimized, with slow parts of it ripped out and replaced with code rewritten from scratch, mainly in the contact editor.

If you had ever used the older version, than you'd notice the performance improvements almost immediately after you log in. This new one is much snappier and more responsive.

Design-wise, we are super happy with this upgrade. We knew for a while that our interface really needed some design changes to improve usability and overall was due a massive dose of freshness.

As the web is moving from our desktops to our hands, mobile usability is becoming important in UI design. Regretfully, this new design is definitely not for viewing on a 7-inch like my Blackberry Playbook, a smartphone like my Blackberry Torch.

Yes, it needed usability improvements, but, from my perspective, the UI updates were more of just a cosmetic redesign. Sure the colors are now much easier on the eyes, especially for long periods when cleaning up contacts, but they still haven't made the interface look fresh because it's not innovative.

Back on May 13th, I wrote about separating social networking profiles from parts of the address book. This revamp would have been a great opportunity to do something innovative and shake things up the industry a bit. Unfortunately, their contact information panel is still bloated and feels unorganized.

...the first in a series of major updates due over the course of the coming months.

I'm curious to see what else they've got up their sleeves.

Lack of Setting Priorities for Conflict Resolution

2011-10-02T20:59:06Z

Remember the days of the PDA?

Remember when software and devices could be configured on how to handle conflicts?

Users got to choose whether the PDA overwrote the Desktop, or if the Desktop overwrote the PDA, or if copied to each other regardless of whether they were duplicates or not.

Looking back on those days, it is a wonder how that level of control so easily got taken away from the user without anyone realizing it or raising a fuss about it.

Think about it for a moment.

The major feature request users want is "bi-directional synchronization".

They want changes from one service brought over to another one automatically without having to worry about it.

Unfortunately, it is not as easy or simple as it sounds because these services rarely, if ever, talk directly with each other.

EXAMPLE: FACEBOOK

Users want Facebook friends, their emails, phone numbers, work status, etc... all pulled over and whenever it changes, they want it changed in their address book.
If someone gets un-friended, perhaps users want that contact removed from their address book.
The problem is that, of course, is Facebook's lack of pulling that data out (see my post.....)

EXAMPLE: LINKEDIN

Contacts are often changing their job history and users want their address book to be able to stay on top of those changes.
But what if a contact changes jobs or got promoted or moved to another department?
- Perhaps the user manually updates that contact's information with new phone numbers and email addresses within their personal system.
- Since it is the contact's responsibility to update their profile, there is the potential that LinkedIn still has old, outdated data.
- If synchronization was set up, how can the user be sure that their address book's new information will not get overwritten by the old data?

In order to resolve this lack of communication between the various social networks, several third-parties services have popped-up to act as intermediaries. These centralized servers import data from the various networks which allow either exporting manually or through API calls.

Regardless of the method, the bottom-line is that, either way, bi-directional is just not possible.

What happens when that central server sees conflicting data?
- That is where the problem truly exists- when multiple services talk to each other and users no longer have the option to decide which service takes priority.
Who determines what should be kept and what can be overwritten?
Who decides whether something should be added or disregarded?
How does the user know which service or data is the most accurate or up-to-date?
What happens with partial and incomplete data?
If the data gets imported instead of synchronized, does the service add it as additional data or overwrite the existing data?
If it is added, how is the user supposed to know which is the most accurate and up-to-date data?

Since users expect to just "work", they don't want to think about these types of things. When phone numbers get duplicated, email addresses get overwritten, and contacts get lost, they don't care how it happened, they just want it back the way it was so they can fix it themselves.

From what I have seen, it doesn't. It treats it more like an import. Unfortunately, that means that, in the import, if a contact already exists, all it does is ADD the existing information to that contact.

Without actually running the synchronization, there is no way for users to really know, and that should scare them.

Plaxo No Longer Charges For Backup and Recovery

2011-09-27T23:51:27Z

Yesterday, Plaxo, the on-line address book that helped jump start an industry, announced that they will be making their Backup and Recovery Service free to all users. Previously, this feature was only available to Premium users. However, we here at "Staying in Sync" always recommend having redundancy after redundancy, just in case.

Here is a copy of their blog post:

Address Book Backup and Recovery is now FREE for all Plaxo Customers

The backup and recovery feature is now being offered for FREE.

More good news for our Plaxo customers! The backup and recovery feature is now being offered for FREE.

Hey, it’s just a fact of life—people lose their cell phones, and usually that means they lose their address book and all of the contact information, too. Is there anything more frustrating and counter-productive than having to recreate your lost contact list? Now, with Plaxo’s FREE backup and recover feature, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your contact list is backed up and easily recoverable, even if you lose your cell phone…or drop it in the toilet.

Plaxo automatically takes a snapshot of your address book anytime you make significant changes or additions to your account. To access this address book recovery feature, log into your Plaxo account. On the top navigation bar, click on, “Sync & Backup.” Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page in the section titled, “Backup & Recovery” and click “Recover your contacts.” You will have the option to roll back and recover to a specific point in time and there will be a list of available dates for your backup. Select a date and breathe a sigh of relief!

Hope you never have to use the recovery feature, but it’s nice to know you’re address book is backed up, just in case. If Plaxo Backup and Recovery does help you out of a bind, we would love to hear about it!

[Sponsor] Announcing My First Sponsor- Scrubly.com

2011-09-20T17:21:08Z

One thing that I pride myself on is that I work incredibly hard to stay neutral in my comments and posts, but when there is a conflict of interest, it needs to be made as transparent as possible so that you, my readers, can trust what I have to say.

Ever since I started this blog, I have been developing on-line correspondence with several of the major players that I often refer to. Occassionally, I will offer them unsolisited suggestions and feedback regarding their product, bugs that I find, or just tell them something that is really getting under my skin. Such an example is the feedback that I recently provided GIST in regards to their upgraded Blackberry application. This feedback was mostly due to frustrations that I personally was experiencing, but the goal was to get a useful product to my fellow Blackberry users.

Other times, the feedback is given in the form of blog posts, which is quite common among the blogging community.

Unfortunately, FREE does not pay the bills, and as you can imagine, running this blog is not cheap, especially since I am unemployed.

As a synchronization specialist, I have made it known that any of these companies, or any upcoming startups, are welcome to hire me as a freelance consultant.

After reviewing scrubly.com, they did just that as I provided them valuable feedback to help improve their product. Were these proprietary secrets? No. This was feedback, as an average user, my thoughts were, what I'd like to see done differently, bugs I found, etc...

I will confess, though, that I did fall in love with scrubly.com. I love their de-duplication service more than any other that I've used. It is no secret about the issues that I have with other services, and what I feel makes scrubly.com stand out. So yes, it is tough to stay down the middle, BUT, I assure you that if any of the other services steps up to the plate and gives them a run for their money, I will be the first to stand up and show them off.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, here's what it means for you- Scrubly.com is now the FIRST official sponsor of stayinginsync.info (that is not tied to a generic affiliate program).

In honor of kicking off this partnership, we are giving away 25 free one-time scrubs on a first-come, first-serve basis.

To qualify, just leave a comment below telling me why your contact list is so corrupted that it needs a good scrubbing.

In addition, as part of their affiliate program, I am proud to annouce that you, my faithful reader, qualify for 10% off your subscription. To claim this discount, and help support this blog, just go to:

http://www.scrubly.com/user/register/special/stayinginsync

Finally, if your life, contacts, calendar, or any other part of your life is out of sync, and you need help getting in sync, I am available to help you out.

Plaxo Gets Columns

2011-09-10T21:08:58Z

Back in October 2010, I wrote a post about columns in address books. It looks like someone was listening as I recently went to check out Plaxo and saw their new address book format.

Look familiar:

I'm not sure when this change was rolled out, but it is definitely an improvement over anything I have seen recently from any other service, and I applaud this attempt.

Now, if only they would give the columns headings and let us decide what does and does not show up, as well as reorder them.

Yes, I know I'm picky, but I want to see users have more control over what they see and not let companies tell us what we want to see.

What do you think of the new interface?

Do you like having a column view to see more at a glance?

Evernote Comes to the Blackberry Playbook

2011-09-10T20:26:13Z

While I often discuss address books, contacts, and calendars, least we forget the world of data synchronization.

Two days ago, as the proud owner of the Blackberry Playbook, I was extremely thrilled when Evernote annouced the launch of their Playbook application. Ever since I got my Playbook, Evernote is one of only a handful of applications that I have been waiting on pins and needles for.

In case you have never heard of it, Evernote is one of the most powerful FREE notetaking applications available today.

Here is a short introduction to what Evernote can do:

NOTE: For you Microsoft OneNote users out there thinking that this is the same thing, while it shares similar functionality, it is more versatile because of its compatibility across multiple platforms and its price- FREE.

As you can see, it keeps all of your notes in sync via their central cloud service. By synchronizing them to their server from wherever you are, they become available locally/off-line, on your mobile device, or via the browser. You can even encrypt your notes if you want.

And, don't forget one important detail- Evernote embraces the concept of Data Portability.

All this adds up to an application that no one should be without.

I highly recommend it.

You won't regret it.