Good news for BlackBerry business users who are pinching pennies: a free version of the Gwabbit contact manager for BlackBerry is expected to surface in the BlackBerry App World--and only in the App World--on Tuesday, December 8. The current version of Gwabbit for BlackBerry costs $9.99 for a yearlong subscription.
Gwabbit (formerly Technicopia) came out with Gwabbit the BlackBerry app back in May 2009, as the mobile version of its Outlook e-mail add-on. Gwabbit scans incoming e-mail for a signature block. If it finds one, the software compares the contents to your address book contacts. If there's no previous match, or if it looks like there's been a change, Gwabbit will prompt you to add or update the contact.
We were impressed with the convenience Gwabbit gives business users who build up their contact lists from their smartphones. Moreover, we noted how effectively and quickly Gwabbit processed the e-mails, but only so long as the sender's contact details are conveniently organized in the signature block. Gwabbit lacks the sensitivity to pull possibly relevant details from elsewhere in the e-mail.
How could Gwabbit's publisher give away its $10-a-year product for free? ... Read more
Gwabbit is a Microsoft Outlook add-on, and now a BlackBerry application, that helps business professionals who get the names, numbers, and e-mail addresses from a contact's e-mail into their address book without all the tedious typing.
(Credit:
Technicopia)
Gwabbit works its trade by automatically searching the signature block at the end of an e-mail and comparing that to the entries in your Outlook or BlackBerry address book. If there are discrepancies or omissions between the two, Gwabbit will launch and ask if you'd like to create a new address book entry or overwrite an existing one. Gwabbit's edge over Outlook and BlackBerry's native contact management systems is its proficiency in almost instantly grabbing e-mail, phone numbers, and title to create more information-rich entries than either technology's contact-builder does alone.
... Read more
The world got its first look earlier this week at Nokia's XpressMusic phone, a music-focused handset with loads of media-sharing and social-networking features including Facebook. According to a Wall Street Journal story on Thursday, it appears that there may be a deeper partnership forming between the social network and the handset giant.
The two companies are reportedly just in talks, the Journal said, and there is not yet an indication as to which Nokia handsets would have the Facebook app. But it's possible that a compatible Nokia phone could link directly to Facebook profiles in its address book.
This is a big deal because Facebook, for all the hundreds of millions of profiles in its system, doesn't currently offer a great system for managing contacts. When blogger Robert Scoble attempted to use a script to export his Facebook friends' information to address book service Plaxo, Facebook promptly suspended his account. Facebook mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry make it relatively easy to call or text a Facebook contact whose phone number is in the system, but you can't sync your contacts with a phone's main system.
The Journal article noted that Facebook also has been in talks with both Palm and Motorola regarding potential partnerships.
Oh sure, anyone can assign a photo face to a contact on their Windows Mobile phone. But how many can also resize images, associate tasks with a contact, and send text messages from their digital black book?
If you guessed "anyone using the application named above," give yourself a gold star. For about twenty bucks, PhotoContacts for WindowsMobile and Pocket PC rolls your contact list into a stylish wrapper with better people skills than your default address book. Could this application be for you? Check out pros and, yes, a few cons, in this First Look video before sampling the application yourself.
>>See all First Look videos
>>Assign Facebook photos to Outlook contacts
(Credit:
CardScan)
CardScan Personal is a compact business card scanner paired with powerful (though Windows-only) contact management software that makes short work of transforming a stack of business cards into useful information.
The 7.6-ounce scanner measures 4.8 inches wide, 3.3 inches deep, and 1.5 inch high, so it won't take up much room in your bag. (The device even comes with a carrying pouch that keeps the scanner and USB cable together.) According to the company, the CardScan can scan a monochrome card in 5 seconds and a polychrome card in a few more seconds. That's a decent speed, however, the real value comes with the accompanying software. The software not only helps import the information from the cards but is also useful as a standalone contact manager.
I got my hands on a CardScan Personal review unit and set up the system in no time. I installed the software, calibrated the scanner using the included blank card, and chose a location for the program data. I then started feeding the scanner with a series of cards I'd picked up at various parties, networking events, and conferences over the past year. Sadly, the scanner's small size means you have to feed the cards through one-by-one--which is a drag if you try to catch up on hundreds of cards at once like I did.
The CardScan software saves an image of the card with the contact file, so you always have a visual record (helpful for confirming data or just jogging your memory of a person). You can assign categories, labels, and notes to individual cards or to whole batches of cards that you scan at once. For example, as I scanned several dozen cards from last month's Twiistup party, I assigned tags to the whole batch with one click.
The software's optical character recognition, which interprets the information on the cards, was impressive, if not quite perfect. It read the most straightforward cards with no problem. It even cleanly interpreted one card that was crowded with text and had the contact's name at the bottom instead of near the top. The scanner also was not thrown off by some handwritten scribbles on the front of several cards.
The results were less surefire when it came to cards with color backgrounds, photos, or non-Roman characters. These types of cards will doubtlessly require manual correction. Fortunately, CardScan includes a "verified" check box on each record so you can tell instantly whether a record has been confirmed by a human as being accurate. Checking the information can be a little tedious, but it's still easier than typing all the contacts in yourself.
Once the contacts are in, you can automatically sync the information to your primary management software--including Outlook, Windows Mobile, and Palm Desktop--or you can export the records in a variety of formats for use by other applications. CardScan provides free online backup of your data, which also lets you look up your contacts via a secure Web site.
Priced at $169, the CardScan Personal isn't cheap. But if you have a stack of cards sitting on your desk--and especially if you're in an industry where contacts equal money--the easy-to-use CardScan Personal will be worth that cost.
On Sale Now: $139.95 - $167.98
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