Keeping your contact details up to date

KILDARE, IRELAND - I haven't used this blog in ages to be honest. Not sure why, maybe it's just because I lost focus on it. I think I'm just going to make it into a blog on useful software/websites that people should use. The sort of sites that I think are great for keeping productive with.

I'll start off on contacts. Ever have the hassle of dealing with, and maintaining all those contacts and wonder about how to get people to update their contact details for you if you ever leave one email account, or change your mobile phone number?
I'll recommend Plaxo
With the ability to synchronise between all the different system (although they can't update the Gmail account, they can only take it and merge with all your other details), it is one of those brilliantly simple systems.

Of course, if you're carrying a phone that can be backed up to your computer, I hope you're making the most of this feature. You all know how annoying it is when you lose or break your mobile phone and lose all your contacts (most new Nokia's and Sony Ericsson's support this feature now). Plaxo can be used to keep it merged with your other address-books so that everything is up to date.
The neat part is that by being registered to the site that whenever you modify your details, it automatically replicates it across all your other contacts also meaning you never have to worry about getting people to update manually. Removes the human issue basically!
Only about 10 people I know are on it right now but already it's saved me some trouble, but come on and join the party! Think of it as a version of Facebook for keeping in contact with people, the big difference being that all your data isn't locked into Facebook's systems.

Trustworthy Tech: Cellular Services - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

**Update: Incorrectly posted to my personal blog**

Trustworthy Tech: Cellular Services - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

It's funny, having worked for a Wireless operator, I watch in amusement as a company with zero experience whatsoever in mobile devices comes in and at it's first attempt wipes the floor on everything else on the market. Having tinkered with most of what is now the cutting edge devices (Nokia N95, Win Mobile, etc.), I can see that they all had major flaws. Still though, how was a non-mobile company allowed to do this?!?

Trustworthy Tech: Cellular Services - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Trustworthy Tech: Cellular Services - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

It's funny, having worked for a Wireless operator, I watch in amusement as a company with zero experience whatsoever in mobile devices comes in and at it's first attempt wipes the floor on everything else on the market. Having tinkered with most of what is now the cutting edge devices (Nokia N95, Win Mobile, etc.), I can see that they all had major flaws. Still though, how was a non-mobile company allowed to do this?!?

Joke: Phones Anonymous

I was sitting on a plane (again) on Wednesday evening as we landed into Dublin airport, I noticed the most amusing thing. It moved like a wave down the camera as I listened to almost an echo of the Nokia tone as people jumped to turn their phone on immediately upon landing. Who says people aren't addicted?
Now this is being written by someone a) who used to work for a Mobile phone operator, b) has had a mobile phone since 1998, and c) has a personal best of a monthly phone bill of €1000+ (while working for the mobile phone operator ;) so please take this as very tongue in cheek.

I'm going to set up PAA. I know it doesn't sound as catchy as AA, but Phone Addicts Annonymous should do really really well!
Picture it:
"Hi, my name is ...... and I'm a phone addict"
"The first step on my road to curing my illness is to accept my illness"
"The first thing I do in the morning is turn over to turn my phone on. Actually that's not right, I don't even turn it off anymore - it sleeps right beside me. I call it my other girlfriend"
"Sometimes I find myself unconsciously looking at it in the hope that it says 'one new message received'"
"I've even found I'm comfortable enough now to have conversations for the world to hear while walking down the middle of streets surrounded by complete strangers"
"And whenever I have to stand around waiting for someone/thing, I find myself punching away on those tiny buttons (unless I've an iphone where it doesn't have any....oh never mind...) to keep myself occupied. It's like the little angel (or devil?) that sits on my shoulder."
"I find I can't go more than a short period without it. You should see what I'm like when I forget to bring it with me. OH I'M SO SORRY PHONE FOR LEAVING YOU BEHIND - FORGIVE ME!!!!!"

"someday, my aim is not to look the phone screen before a message has arrived"
"I know it'll take time, but I'm willing to work on it"

[INSERT CLAPPING NOISE FROM OTHER PAA ATTENDEE'S]





Have a good weekend all!

Jaiku: a blog entry on reasons why it was fantastic

I've commented on this company before but having read this blog entry only now, it explains all the benefits of how useful it is. Forget about comparing Jaiku with Twitter (note: I've never tried Twitter but have read enough on it to know how it works and the concept behind it).

Tim O'Reilly, of internet fame, has written up a great write-up on his own blog under the title: I love my iPhone, but...bah, no Jaiku!.
This is the first time I've seen someone write on Jaiku and it's uses in how I've described (on this blog and in an Gtalk discussion with a friend recently :). His primary reason for the blog entry is due to his disappointment that he can't get it working on his iPhone, however he gives a great description of it's benefit.s He goes on to elaborate even more on the benefits of integration into address book and the like. For anyone interested, it's well worth the read.
All thoughts are welcome here also for anyone who's been lucky enough to try it out.

Note: Jaiku were bought out by Google recently and as part of it, they closed their service for the moment. For anyone interested, I have two spare accounts on Jaiku if you're interested in trying it out........ post on the comments or email me directly if you want to play with it. Note that they're under the username 'ntesting1' and 'ntesting2' (used from testing when I originally used the service in September '06) but you're more than welcome to use them.....

Macworld: News: Facebook wants to make members' data portable

Macworld: News: Facebook wants to make members' data portable

What an interesting concept! Facebook, a site I've been wary of (even though I do use the site regularly) due to it's closed-in nature, is reporting that it wants to make "the social network’s profiles portable, so that they can move that data to other online services if they want, the company’s CEO said Wednesday.....It’s the users’ data. We want to [make it portable.] That’s the goal...”

What an interesting concept and potentially very revolutionary. Facebook admittedly have been at the forefront of open access (although for 3rd party services, not themselves) so it's no surprise they're the first network to do so. Still though, could this become the secure sign-on that people have wished for for years? Think about it - sign into your Facebook account and it gives you access to use your data everywhere else without about having to supply more info. Outlandish, but entirely plausible if they play this right......
I'm interested to see where this goes!

Unfortunately, this shows just how limited my old companies systems are - without even a widget to use their own application externally yet. How frustrating......

Internet duplication

Has anyone noticed the one small issue with the Internet (o.k., there's more and maybe it's not small :). I had an email discussion with a friend yesterday about the fact of duplicity.
you'll all have seen it. You do a search on Google (does anyone use anyone else anymore?!) and it comes back with 50,000 results for your query. you start trawling through some of the links to find that lots of them are basically 'copy and pastes' of other sites. Bad form, eh?

the main reason the discussion came about was due to posting up calendar events on TGU. I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't see why we were going to have to create our own Google Calendar entries for tv shows when I couldn't understand why the tv networks weren't offering it themselves. They're the sort of thing that would just be useful. These are the sort of things that fall across multiple areas though.
Why so many different CD lookup databases - would it not be easier to just have one single global one? Instead of having to looking across multiple databases to find album info, it would all be in one location.
I suppose Wikipedia has the potential to work like this - a central repository for all info regarding, well, everything (and taking the example, I see people have started adding all data related to music artists, including track listings - now all they have to do is integrate it into all the music players ;)

What do people think on this?