Google Contacts Nightmare

So a slight problem recently with contacts.
I use a number of tools and web apps in my daily life to keep things organised beacuse I work for myself I use a number of machines in a number of offices so it’s easier to rely on web applications for some tasks.

30 boxes (30boxes.com) for a calendar as this also allows my partner to add events and we can keep track of what nights we have free for stuff which is nice.
Gmail (gmail.com) for email as it’s usually reliable and has heaps of storage space and I like the search
plaxo (plaxo.com) for keeping my contacts up to date
linkedin (linkedin.com) for business contacts
mobile me (me.com) because it came free with my iPhone and works with my MacBook address book

The problem I have now is syncing al the data.

This used to be easy as every now and then I would sync with plaxo to my work machines and that would pick up new contacts and I would dump them into Gmail manually. Not too painful and simple.

Now though the iPhone sync has got the better of me. Gmail has a whacked-out idea of contacts management in that email addresses are automatically added to your contacts list each time you use the reply, reply to all, or forward functions to send messages to addresses not previously stored in your contacts list. Sounds great in theory. In practise I don’t actually know a lot of those people and I may not want them in my contacts list.

iPhone has imported contacts from Gmail bringing all this random data and that has synched with mobile me and now my phone has 1800+ contacts only around 300 of which I actually added myself.

Google what are you thinking adding all these people to my contacts list without asking me?
Apple what are you doing allowing me to sync with data that is so different from my original set without setting off alarm bells somewhere.

Gah!

Google Desktop

So I’ve indexed my laptop now and was worried to see files from as far back as 17 November 1996. On closer inspection most of the really old files seem to ship with MS Office.
Now I know having worked for a large company creating software previously that sometimes legacy code remains simply because no one knows what it does.
In this case however many of the files seem to be windows meta files. Now I know most of them are only 12 to 13k (like the lovely hearts C:\Program%20Files\Microsoft%20Office\MEDIA\CAGCAT10\J0230876.WMF) but that means that firstly Microsoft have not updated the clip art in Office since 1997 and secondly all of this dodgy stuff is cluttering up my hard drive. No wonder it takes so long to install and start etc etc.

So some other random thoughts here;
Can I remove all of these files safely?
Is Google indexing the dates correctly?
Why oh why did someone create this delight? C:\Program%20Files\Microsoft%20Office\OFFICE11\BITMAPS\STYLES\STONE.BMP

flickr and maps

Those lovely people over at flickr have integrated geotagging and yahoo maps into the organiser function. Very nice integration. Well if you live in the US it is. If you live in say London…

You might have more of a problem. Yahoo maps just simply doesn’t cut the mustard for this kind of application. Well any application actually. Let’s compare Google and Yahoo maps for my neighbourhood.

You can see if you look closely towards the centre a big square block called Du Cane Court. Well you can on the map on the left (google) on the right you just see a blur of housing.

searching…

So want to know what people are seaching for? Well okay people using AOL are searching for.
Interestingly the outrage caused by this lapse in privacy by making this information available (and if you have no idea what I am talking about there is a link here) is nothing compared to the other information you can gleen from this data.

AOL Search is powered by google. It’s branded as such. Yet there are over 180,000 searches for … google or it’s varients.

Useful links
research.aol.com
New York Times article
AOL Search Database
AOL Search Logs
Black Box Search – Anonymous proxy searching for Google, MSN and Yahoo!

Do I really need a new IM client?

Okay so I use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and iChat for work. They work nicely and most people I know use them.
I use MSN sparingly and a few people I know use it but of course more importantly the other half uses it.
I was having problems using MSN for mac until I discovered that I could hook up MSN into iChat using the jabber protocol and MSN transport.
I’ve noticed a couple of developments recently in the IM space.
The trend to create site based messaging continues. Many of the newer social networking sites come with a proprietary messenger service. See imeem.com for example here and even myspace are looking to launch a messenger. Also a newer smarter trend for services that work on many platforms and move with you like indi – it’s not just a messenger it also is a storage utility for contacts and notes etc. See getindi.com for example.

My big question though is why would I need a new messenger? If you take email as an example the beauty of it is that you send a message to anyone on any other service and they receive it and respond.
With messengers there are 3 big players, MSN, AIM and ICQ. AIM and ICQ talk to each other and MSN and Yahoo! talk to each other.

Allegedly MSN and Yahoo! hold 44 per cent of the worldwide IM user base between them, with AOL (AIM and ICQ) taking, according to Radicati Group. Third parties such as Jabber aren’t statistically significant, with Google’s Jabber-based chat holding just 0.5 per cent. So really there are 2 big players, the AOL people and the MSN people.

If the big players refuse to talk to each other that leaves the space open for the likes of trillian and meebo.com. Trillian is software that allows you to sign into different IM services using one piece of software and Meebo is similar but web based so no download or install required (handy for internet cafes and travelers) and also means it is platform agnostic (you just need a supported web browser).

Meebo is my favourite in this space so far. I can use it on either of my Macs or my work laptop and with a single login I can be signed into MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! and Jabber and GTalk.
So until the big boys play nicely I’ll be using meebo.com

I wonder if…

I used the phrase Ivan Massow Naked with his Pink Motorola V3 Razr and CTU ringtone all in the same post would google melt?
It seems that those three phrases were all anyone over the past week searched for to get here.
So for those of you searching here they are in no particular order.
CTU Ringtones (24 TV Series), Pink Motorola V3,and Ivan Massow Naked
massow3.jpg