Free online address book, please

March 31, 2008 9:29 AM

Please recommend a free online address book for my slightly technophobic step-mom. I've found a bunch that might work, but not having any experience with them, I don't know which are safe and which are going to sell her info to spammers. The easier to use, the better.
posted by arcticwoman to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Have her use Google Docs and keep them in a text document?
posted by zippy at 10:17 AM on March 31

Highrise from 37Signals. It does more than she would need, but it dead simple and is from one of the best software developers (so her information is safe). It's free for up to 250 contacts.

http://www.highrisehq.com/
posted by cgomez at 10:23 AM on March 31

I like Plaxo.com, because you can also use it to sync with Google, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc if you feel like you're outgrowing it and want to move to another service.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:23 AM on March 31

Plaxo isn't bad. If she uses Gmail (or if you can get her to), its contact manager is pretty good. In fact, I've been slowly migrating entirely to it.
posted by wheat at 11:49 AM on March 31

Following up on zippy's comment, why not make it a spreadsheet instead? You could set up the relevant columns and share it with yourself for future trouble-shooting.
posted by wheat at 11:51 AM on March 31

I've been using Airset for several years now. It's a very user friendly online address book. It has other features as well but I really only use the address book. Solid, no spam, easy, always there.
posted by susandennis at 11:32 AM on April 1