Plaxo inches further onto your desktop with new Mac application

It's no shock that contact management site Plaxo has been a fierce advocate of data portability. As a result, it's not particularly surprising that the service continues to expand browser-to-desktop application functions: on Wednesday, the company announced that the latest version of its downloadable Mac client will sync the Plaxo Pulse social network to Apple's Address Book software. This comes in the wake of an announcement that data from Pulse--which aggregates feeds from social media sites like Flickr and Twitter into a common profile--would also sync with Microsoft Outlook.

A Mac address book entry with a Pulse widget

(Credit: Plaxo)

The new version of Plaxo's Mac client, available now, pulls a Pulse widget into entries in the Mac address book, displaying content from the feeds that the Plaxo member in question has hooked up to his or her Pulse profile. Additionally, as with older versions of the Plaxo for Mac application, the downloadable software will synchronize data from Apple's address book and calendar software with Plaxo's online contact management system.

Meanwhile, Valley gossips seem to be split down the middle on whether Plaxo, which has reportedly put itself up for sale, will be acquired by Facebook. The two share some intimate ties, as Plaxo co-founder Sean Parker went on to a brief stint as president of Facebook, but they have had very different strategies for data management--Plaxo aims to make data as open and portable as possible for convenience and flexibility, whereas Facebook keeps it behind closed doors for privacy.