Paying my Plaxo karmic debt

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For a number of years I have received emails from readers, some I’ve known, some I haven’t, stating that they were “using Plaxo to update their address books” and that I should fill in the blanks with my address and phone to complete their records.

I have to admit that for the most part I wasn’t so good at complying (I don’t do so good with LinkedIn requests either.)

Recently, I found myself staring at load of work so I did what many small business owners do, I decided it was time to change my email client and update my address book. (When I was in college I always decided to clean my room the night before a big test.)

So let me set the table. I was, like the majority, an Outlook user for years. Pretty much had to be, or so I thought. About 6 months ago I bought a Mac and was an Outlook user no more. In an attempt to stay with familiar business tools I started using Microsoft’s Mac version called Entourage. The program works reasonably well, but not really. The Mac native tools, Mail, Address Book and iCal are nice free tools, but pretty weak excuses for a business application and, between you and me, I find it amazing that Apple doesn’t think these tools should automatically work together.

There is a point to all this, just hang in there.

I am a Firefox user from way back so I’ve always kept an open ear for things coming out of Mozilla. I’m a little late to this party but I’ve starting using Thunderbird 2, Mozilla’s open source mail application with the Lightning calendar extension, on my Mac and I think all is well again. To be fair, I used Thunderbird for a period several years ago but it was too bugy. This newest version is awesome and becoming much more Outlook compatible. (I can accept meeting requests generated from Outlook users.) The Lightning extension is based on Mozilla’s very functional Sunbird calendar program.

Well, as anyone who has made an address book, email and calendar change on the same day can attest, loading the new programs is the easy part – getting years of data moved isn’t so easy. And this is where the all new Plaxo stepped in.

I won’t bore you with any more details but, well, maybe one more, Plaxo can subscribe to Google Calendars so I uploaded my calender via iCal to a private Google Calendar and synced that with Plaxo and then using the Plaxo add-on for Thunderbird, to bring my entire calendar into Thunderbird. (Thunderbird can subscribe the Google Calendar feed) Here’s the cool thing about this set-up. When I update my calendar on my local machine, the change gets put on my Google Calendar. This makes a great way to share a calendar or several calendars without ever going online to make changes. For example, I have a workshop and speaking calendar that I display on the workshop page of my web site. When I book a speaking gig, I put it on my calendar on my laptop, it goes to the workshop Google Calendar, which throws off an RSS feed, that automatically displays this change on my workshop web page.

So, I went to Plaxo for what I thought was a nice workaround for some data transfer and I stayed (and bought the Premium account) because this service has become so useful that I believe every small business should employ it. I heard lots of chatter in the blogoshere about the Plaxo 3.0, but I kind of ignored it. If you have, you shouldn’t. There are many useful features and more to come.

And now the karmic part. All you Plaxo users send me your update requests and I will honor them!

One last sidebar: Syncing the mobile. I couldn’t find a program that would sync with Thunderbird on a Mac to a Windows Smart Phone. Plaxo will soon offer over the air phone syncing for my Windows Smart Phone and that will be awesome. For now, I add entries to my calendar/phone, which write to Google Calendar, which is subscribed to by iCal, which can update in a program called Missing Sync for Windows. Not perfect, but perfectly duct tapeish!

So, what’s your elegant duct tape solution for getting all your communication devices playing nice?

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Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 06, 07 | 7:07 am
Category: Plaxo, Thunderbird | Tags:

Comments

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Jon Moss

Hey John,

Great post and good timing for me....
With the impending iPhone arrival in the Uk, (about damn time), I am looking to streamline my calendar and contacts.

I was using Google Calendar, and was very pleased, but recently it has been playing silly wotsits - not deleting properly and generally being naughty. I had purchased Spanning Sync to sync with iCal but have now given up on Gcal completely.

For contacts, I use the Address Book App but also Highrise from 37 signals. Greatascent is on a beta at the mo for syncing Highrise and Address book but I had some problems with that too.

So, I am still trying to get it all streamlined in time for the 9th Nov!

James

funambol! its an open source calendar/contact/mail syncing application based on syncml. this all happens over the net and the system works with outlook, windows mobile, thunderbird, evolution (this is what I use).. it also can implement push email and calendar changes if your mobile provider gives you a public ip.

John Jantsch

James,

Thanks for that type I was not familiar with funambol - I'll check it out

Joe

Why use a local email client at all?

John Jantsch

Joe,

Habit I suppose, but you're right and I've considered moving to GMail.

darryl ohrt

Wow. Great post - and good timing.

I used to have a PC AND a mac, and when I got the iPhone, eliminated the PC. One less machine in my life is great.

So I too, have been searching for a better email client. (Use Gmail for safety net, but don't like it as my main client)

I use Google's calendar, fed through RSS to iCal, and then to iPhone. Sucks that it only works one way, and I can't add stuff to the iPhone and have it show in my main calendar. Has me considering a migration to iCal.

I too have been ignoring all of the positive chatter on Plaxo, and your post has me curious. Did you send out that email to all of your contacts? How did they react?

John Jantsch

Darryl,

I did not do the wholesale contact dump. I selectively asked and took the time to write a custom message, acknowledging that it was a minor hassle. I received about 50% uptake and considering the spam filtering issues I thought that was pretty good.

Taking the time to write a custom message is worth it. Nothing is more irritating than the canned stuff from the vendor.

Darrin Dickey

John,

I ignored Plaxo requests from people for a while, skeptical that one more online service wanted my contact info. But once I started using it, I was addicted. Today, like you, I'm a subscriber to their premium service and it's one of my most valued services.

BTW, someone asked why use a local mail client at all. I need my contacts to be available offline sometimes for various reasons, including when I'm somewhere I have no connection. If nothing else, Outlook is good offline contact management for me.

Darrin

Jason

Ok your idea is probobly much cheaper however I subscribe to APPRIVER.com and it's an exchange server for 12.00 per month. It is fully compatable with windows mobile (treo user) and will even work with a Blackberry. It has an amazing spam fiter cuts about 200 spam messages per day and it has yet to delete any legitimate mail.

Jason

Gavin Ingham

I have always shared your doubts and have built up my own share of karmic debt over the years.

Recently I did reconsider but was put off by several clients expressing their ongoing reservations.

I may well now reconsider...

Ted

I would like to answer the question, "Why use a local e-mail client at all." It's necessary in a corpoprate environment where other people need to access my calendar, and other people's calendars, to schedule group meetings and determine that availability of the participants.

As for Plaxo, I've been using it for several years. I have it set up for access from my home computer and from the office computer (both use MS Outlook). When I enter a contact or appointment (or when anyone schedules an appointment for me) it automatically gets posted to both computers - almost instantaneously. It's also nice to be able to access all of the information from any computer, anywhere, including the schedule updates from my co-workers.

I also synchronize a Palm with Outlook so I have everything with me whether I'm at a computer or not. In this case, having the phone numbers of my contacts has frequestly been a life saver (ok, maybe just a time-saver).

The ability to inform your entire communication group about changes to you e-mail address or any other personal information -- without have to send an e-mail to everyone -- is also a wonderful time saver.

Ted at PSSIUSA.com

Brandon Weber

I have finally gotten my iPhone, Google Calendar and iCal working seamlessly.

I like to keep my Calendars on-line, so Google calendar is great. I have Spanning Sync which syncs both ways with my iCal. When I make a change on my Phone, I can sync with my Mac, which in turn syncs with Google Calendar.

All of my email runs through gMail first (amazing & teachable junk filters!) before having them forwarded to an IMAP account that keeps all of my computers (yes, I occasionally use a PC) on the same page. I also use gMail for archiving all of my email (I even BCC it and have a rule for my mail to go into the "sent" category). But I still like to read it for the most part through my mail client(s).

Joe

FYI - gmail is in the process of rolling out IMAP access for gmail - this means you can keep all of your email in gmail and access with any web client - with no sync problems.

Ted - yes, I agree, in a corporate environment a local email client is necessary.

John Jantsch

Joe,

IMAP for gmail, something exists with a .mac or Yahoo mail account, will be a good solution.

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