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

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

jkl345 — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:10:35 -0800

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!

By: ajr

ajr — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:20:55 -0800

Highrise.

By: mpls2

mpls2 — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:40:06 -0800

I use the contacts feature of gmail. It's searchable, exportable, free, stable, and it plays well with certain services (gmail, gcal, evite, etc.)

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:42:25 -0800

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.

By: jkl345

jkl345 — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:45:33 -0800

Furtive: I use gmail for email. I haven't investigated vcards, and suggestions on where I can learn more?

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:06:20 -0800

Plaxo.

Although highrise is neat, too

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:31:08 -0800

Airset meets all of your requirements, and it's a great groupware product as well.

By: bigmusic

bigmusic — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:32:02 -0800

Forgot the link..
Airset

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 19:01:21 -0800

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.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:39:14 -0800

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.

By: Artifice_Eternity

Artifice_Eternity — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 22:09:17 -0800

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.

By: furtive

furtive — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:14:50 -0800

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.

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:02:26 -0800

Hi! Just stumbled on Schedule World and thought it might be worth mentioning here.