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Mobile Phone Contact Syncer

Submitted by: branchcut
Created: May 13, 2007, 10:24 am

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The Idea

A software application which can sync contacts from any type of bluetooth enabled phone to/from various contact managers such as Yahoo, Google, and MS Outlook. The most basic version would simply be a taskbar application that communictes w/ the phone via bluetooth, and requires no special software for the phone. The advanced version would also require software to be installed on the phone so that it could synchronize contacts via wi-fi or GPRS/3G. The bottom line is that it would make the whole ordeal super-easy and work with as many phones and contact manager systems as possible.

The business model would be to give the software free to end users and charge the differenent contact manager providers a licensing fee to be included in the synchronization choices. If the software became popular and the users were requesting it, the contact manager providers would be forced to pay the license fees or else deal with disgruntled users.

I thought of this idea when I was...

... dealing with the mess of trying to sync various phones to my Yahoo Address Book. Each PC Sync application for the different phones have to be installed and run seperately, and none of them can sync with an online contact manager.

Comments Posted

leese Posted: May 13, 2007, 5:00 pm

Maybe come up with an address book format similar to the iCal standard for publishing calendars. (Or is there one already?)

Kempton Posted: May 13, 2007, 11:52 pm

I think there are s/w that does this kind of update to some mobile phones already.

sajjadi335 Posted: May 14, 2007, 2:06 am

I have a software which knows almost all the available phones and syncs with them. Of course it can't sinc directly on internet, but it can export csv files. I'll check its name for you at home

ByondByond Posted: May 14, 2007, 11:37 am

i can do that already as well

Allan Posted: May 14, 2007, 5:03 pm

I swapped my last two cell phones by using SynchML connect to the www over WiFi from the old phone and back to the new phone. (Mobical host this for free.)

I agree direct synch between multiple devices is a pain, but there is an industry dedicated to this Plaxo, Mobical etc. All trying to make it easier and get the dominace you describe - while meeting the agreed open standards.

I can see the use of a single product that would sych all devices would be useful, but think/hope the mobile industry is getting there by adopting open standards hence think this product could be out of date, fast.

branchcut Posted: May 15, 2007, 2:08 pm

Allan -- thanks for the useful links.

Mobical only works over GPRS and requires you to have something called a SyncML client on your phone (whatever that is .. dont think my phone has it). There's a lot of people out there that dont have GPRS available to them, and there many others that have it but aren't willing to deal with expensive charges.

For Plaxo, after reading the comments on these blogs I don't think I would sign up for them since they apparently will send messages to all your contacts asking for "updates".

http://lifehacker.co...le-phones-211593.php
http://www.lifehacke...ith-plaxo-160152.php

I'm happy with using Yahoo Address Book, just looking for a free software app on the PC that will allow me to sync my contacts from various phones via bluetooth... w/o having to install anything on the phone.

sajjadi335 Posted: May 16, 2007, 1:06 am

My software was named mobile manager

Hello!

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