What's the ultimate digital rolodex-life-contact-birthdate-organizer application?

September 15, 2007 2:10 PM

This year I’ve been trying to organize and digitize my life, and most importantly -- get rid of old stuff. Next on my list is creating an ultimate name-phone-number-birth-date-email-organizer-web rolodex.

I have a shoebox full of notes, business cards, phone books and napkins with about 400-500 social/business/family/friend/school contacts (as well as a bunch of social networking sites with tons of contact info I should incorporate into the rolodex).

Please help me find the ultimate web service to organize, digitize, archive and utilize my ‘virtual rolodex.’

Ideally, if it could be:
- Free
- Exportable, so I can save and take it to different applications if for instance a company goes belly up or starts charging for access (I don’t even know if this standard exists like OPML files for RSS… I guess a CSV would do?)
- A very easily searchable interface
- Web-based
- Come sort of utility built in to notify me of upcoming birthdays/anniversaries and such would be awesome!

Most important:
- I only want to type all these out once, so it must be stable.

I’m leaning towards just typing them all into a Google Docs spreadsheet, but want to explore other options before I type all this out. And if I haven't said it three times already, I really only want to do this once in my life!

Thanks for all your help!

posted by jkl345 to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Highrise.
posted by ajr at 2:20 PM on September 15, 2007

I use the contacts feature of gmail. It's searchable, exportable, free, stable, and it plays well with certain services (gmail, gcal, evite, etc.)
posted by mpls2 at 2:40 PM on September 15, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

What do you use for email? vcard is made for that stuff and if you synch it to vcard you can carry it over to your cell phone some day or vice versa.
posted by furtive at 2:42 PM on September 15, 2007

Furtive: I use gmail for email. I haven't investigated vcards, and suggestions on where I can learn more?
posted by jkl345 at 2:45 PM on September 15, 2007

Plaxo.

Although highrise is neat, too
posted by YoBananaBoy at 3:06 PM on September 15, 2007

Airset meets all of your requirements, and it's a great groupware product as well.
posted by bigmusic at 4:31 PM on September 15, 2007

Forgot the link..
Airset
posted by bigmusic at 4:32 PM on September 15, 2007

vCard is a data format, I believe, not a program. I think you'd be better off picking a device that lets you save data into vCard(.vcf) files than trying to type it in that way by hand.
posted by Orb2069 at 7:01 PM on September 15, 2007

I only want to type all these out once, so it must be stable.

Once you type them all in, print out two copies. Keep one with your important documents at home, keep one somewhere else. Paper is stable, doesn't have to be upgraded every 6 months or whatever, many benefits. Some of the info will become out of date on your paper version, but I would bet money that a day will come when you're glad to have even a somewhat out-of-date paper backup.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:39 PM on September 15, 2007

I recently entered all my contacts (names, phone numbers, addresses) into my cell phone. I can sync my cell phone to my computer, so as long as I do this regularly, my phone can be my address book, and the computer will be the backup.

But Gmail contacts would be my next choice. The combination of Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs is increasingly what I use for organizing much of my life.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:09 PM on September 15, 2007

I was first introduced to vcard with my Palm way back in 1999. Since then I've imported/exported my contacts to Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Address Book, GMail and my RAZR phone and I've never lost anyone, I still have names of people I haven't spoken with for 8 years! The only real effort is deciding which device/app is your master one, and updating others from that.
posted by furtive at 11:14 AM on September 16, 2007

Hi! Just stumbled on Schedule World and thought it might be worth mentioning here.
posted by Orb2069 at 9:02 PM on October 15, 2007