Contacts

New parent for Diapers.com

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon is buying the parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com

Google tests a product to let you record Google Voice calls in Gmail

Google disallows Facebook from pulling Gmail contacts to find friends

The BlackBerry Torch is now available for $99 in black, red, or white

A Chinese company is set to unveil a color e-ink eReader

November 17 will be the day to unfriend your undesirables on Facebook

But don't unfriend the Queen of England because she just joined Facebook

The Hex band gives you a way to be … Read more

Google to require two-way data-sharing street

Google is putting its data liberation philosophy to work in a direct slap at Facebook.

Techcrunch noticed last night that Google made a subtle change to a paragraph in the guidelines that govern how external services can let their users import contacts data from Google. Now those services will have to allow their users to export that data in a manner similar to how Google handles data export, which means Facebook will have to change its policy if it wants to allow users to morph Gmail contacts with Facebook friends.

Facebook has long resisted the notion of allowing people to … Read more

Manage calls on your Mac

Dialectic is a scriptable dialing utility for telephone power users that can save you time making and managing calls, whether via a landline, Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, or VoIP. Dialectic integrates with Address Book and other similar apps, including Microsoft Entourage and Now Contact, as well as Marketcircle Daylite, FileMaker Pro, launcher apps like LaunchBar and Quicksilver, and many others. Thanks to recent updates, Dialectic also supports Exchange, CardDAV, and LDAP accounts configured in Address Book.

This high-powered utility gives you system-wide dialing using contextual menus (and system-wide "speed dial"), voice-activated dialing, and auto-redial and incoming call detection, even … Read more

Apple changes a name that could change repair policies

Apple has changed the name of one of the key components used to determine whether or not damage was caused by liquid submersion. Though the change is subtle, now the Liquid Contact Indicator, it could signal a change in Apple's repair policies.

Formally the Liquid Submersion Indicator, a sensor that is meant to determine if the device (now on iPhones, iPods, and iPads) has been immersed in liquid, has been the subject of many consumer complaints saying the indicator was not accurate in particular climates.

When I worked in Apple Retail, as part of the original iPhone launch, we … Read more

Apple, Apple, Apple!

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded: Apple's music event to stream live Television show rentals from Apple Netflix on Apple TV New webOS 2.0 for HP's Palm Microsoft set to release updated Xbox 360 controller Sneak peek at the T-Mobile G2 phone

Duly noted

It's not always easy to keep ideas organized, especially when you're working on a big project. TreeNotes is a simple but effective way to organize notes in a tree hierarchy. We think this intuitive program could be useful for a wide range of people including students, creative writers, project managers, and many more.

The program's interface is basic and easy to navigate, with large buttons representing the program's major features. A toolbar across the top is similar to that found in many word-processing programs. Down the left side of the interface the tree hierarchy is displayed, … Read more

Google revamps contact management in Gmail

Google on Tuesday announced that it is giving the contact management tool found inside Gmail an "overhaul."

The enhanced version of Gmail's contact manager, which Google says is already in the process of going out to users, brings with it a number of small tweaks, the biggest one being automatic saving. So, if you're making changes to a contact, you can be halfway through making edits or additions and if you close the page, or move onto something else, those changes get saved without any user input required.

Also included now are Gmail's standard keyboard … Read more

Chatting gets savvier

This week in The Download Dispatch, instant messaging gets upgraded. On Monday, the refurbished Trillian 5 beta for Windows was released to the masses. The all-in-one chat client (download) received a sleek interface makeover, adding LinkedIn and Foursquare social-networking services to its portfolio of social sites. In addition, this build makes entering, exiting, and registering the program a smoother process. Because this is not the final release, the application is not completely user-friendly; pinned functions and lengthy installation are just a couple of hiccups that we hope get sorted out in the next release. Digsby (download) also received an update. … Read more

Thunderbird gets web-savvy with Contacts

One of the best features in the Thunderbird remix called Postbox was the deep and fluid integration of social networking contacts into the desktop e-mail client. Thunderbird itself has begun to get a taste of that power with Thunderbird Contacts, a version of Mozilla Contacts, a Firefox add-on that made the browser more socially aware.

Thunderbird Contacts is so new that Mozilla is still switching between that name and "Contacts for Thunderbird" in its blog post announcing the add-on. Whatever it's called, it pulls your cloud-stored contact info from numerous sites into Thunderbird, and then merges the … Read more