Hands up if you forget birthdays all the damn time. Hey, whoa, slow down. I can’t see all of you at the back. Waaaaay too many hands. Wait. No, OK, hands down. Let’s do this differently.
We’ll forget about the counting bit, and just assume that pretty much everyone forgets birthdays and ends up hating themselves just a tiny bit more each time. Especially when a few months later, the person whose birthday you forgot remembers yours, and sends a perfectly judged gift too. Dammit.
Social networking app Path hit the headlines yesterday after it turned out the company was taking users’ entire address books and uploading them to their servers.
It’s a big privacy violation, but Path’s hardly the only one doing this. In fact, computer engineering professor Mark Chang has just discovered that Hipster, the popular photo-filter postcards app, does the exact same thing as Path: sucks up your contacts and squirts them into their servers.
We told you yesterday that Path was secretly uploading your iPhone’s entire address book to its servers. Users of the inclusive social network voiced concern, and many decided to remove the app entirely until Path addresses the issue in an upcoming update.
It’s common practice for third-party apps to access and even store your contacts elsewhere. The problem with Path is that there was no indication that this activity was taking place. Path’s CEO stated that the app would make the activity opt-in when the next update is pushed out.
Thanks to a brand new jailbreak tweak, you’ll never have to worry about an app silently stealing your personal contacts data again.
We’ve already shown you how to sync your address book with the Facebook app for iOS to add profile pictures and other credentials, but what if you prefer to use Twitter instead? Well, fortunately for you, you can also sync your address book with Twitter, and it’s incredibly easy thanks to iOS 5’s Twitter integration.
There’s been a lot of ohhing and ahhing about Cobook in the last few days, but spend just a few minutes playing with it and you’re likely to be ohhing and ahhing too. I know I am.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWorld 2012 — At the media preview last night at Macworld/iWorld, VIPOrbit Software had a ton of news to offer.
First, they unveiled a new version of VIPOrbit for the iPhone. The latest version has new features requested by its users, an improved user interface and an enhanced Dashboard.
Then they debuted VIPOrbit for iPad, bringing signature features from the initial iPhone app to iPad users.
Xobni has brought its Smartr Contacts service to the iPhone today, which a new app that is likely to change the way in which you handle your contacts list forever. The service takes the pain out of maintaining your contacts list by creating profiles for everyone you’ve ever contacted using your emails, calendars, and social networks. It also puts a face to every name and even keeps track of your recent communication history.
Designer extraordinaire Jeff Broderick has created yet another tool for enhancing your productivity on your iOS devices. QuickContact is a beautiful web app that allows you to create app icons for quickly initiating calls or messages from your Home screen.
Adding contact information to your phone can be a tedious task, especially with devices like the iPhone, which allow you to add a whole lot more than just a name and a phone number. But there is one quick and easy way to add missing information to your address book without even touching your device’s virtual keyboard: Syncing your contacts with Facebook.
If you’re a Facebook user — and who isn’t these days? — and you have the official Facebook app installed on your device, you can add birthdays, URLs, and even photos to your address book in just a few taps.
Spotlight search on an iOS device is a fantastic feature. If, like me, you have pages and pages filled with apps, it’s easy to find the one you’re looking for simply by typing the first few letters of its name into Spotlight. You can do the same with songs, contacts, messages, emails, reminders, events, and lots, lots more.
However, there may be some things you don’t want to show in Spotlight. That doesn’t mean you should avoid the feature altogether — just customize its results to suit you. It’s incredibly easy, and not only will this remove items you don’t want to see, it’ll also make it faster to find what you’re looking for.
Sometimes when moving to a newer computer, you realize only after the old system is gone that you’re missing some data. With the proliferation of iPhones and iPads, cloud based services can help transfer things like Contacts and Calendars if incomplete:
My old Mac Pro was running OS X 10.4.11 and my new MacBook Pro came with Snow Leopard. Using Migration assistant just about everything except Contacts transferred correctly. Now the Mac Pro is across the country in NV and I am near DC. The only thing that has my old Contacts is my iPad. How do I transfer my old Contacts from the iPad to the new MacBook Pro without losing them when I sync?
Clint
I ran into someone the other day and he told me that he had over 700 contacts in the Address Book app on his Mac. He expressed concern about losing those contacts. I asked him, “are you performing backups on your Mac?” He wasn’t. We talked about the various ways he could backup his Mac (i.e. Time Machine, external drive, etc.), but I also shared a tip with him that focuses on his contacts.
Apple issued its first iOS 5 update to the public yesterday — an update which was released to fix “bugs affecting battery life” under the latest firmware, amongst other issues. Following the update, however, users have reported that their battery life has seen no improvement, and that iOS 5.0.1 comes with more bugs of its own.
Apple has just launched its iCloud.com online service which will later be the successor to MobileMe. Those signed up to the service can now use their web browser to access their Mail, Contacts, Calendar and more.
The integration of Twitter in the new iOS 5 firmware makes it easier than ever to tweet photos, webpages, YouTube videos and more directly from your iOS device… but did you know there’s also support for a number of other social networks within the Contacts app?
SocialPhone is a brand new app for iOS that combines an impressive, full-featured address book with access to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in one handy application.
