How to be an Original

Ask the readers: What system do you use for contacts?

I have a love/hate relationship with contact information. I use it regularly and think it’s important, yet I can’t get it the way I want it. The solutions don’t satisfy me, but irritate me most of the time. This goes for both the system (I can’t seem to get categories to work for me) and the software (email addresses in Outlook…AARGGH).
I’ve used paper, MS Outlook, several freeware dedicated ’solutions’, Outlook again, my pda. Still I’m not satisfied. I hope your input and your experiences will help inspire me to get it up to speed.

So I’m curious to know what you, the readers, use as a system to store you contact information with. I’m interested both in what software you use and how you manage the contacts in there (categories, tags etc).

Thanks for leaving a suggestion!

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Posted on September 3, 2007 - Filed Under Productivity / GTD
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Comments (6)

  1. Stefano

    Mon 2007.09.03

    I use iCal, and sync it with my Palm. Happy about this, for now.

  2. Jennifer

    Mon 2007.09.03

    I use Gmail. Works great.

  3. Lodewijkvdb

    Tue 2007.09.04

    @Stefano: I don’t have iCal and if I’m not mistaken, it’s only available for the Mac right? As far as I can see this is a calendering system, and I’m looking for a system for my contact information. Name, address, city, phone, e-mail etc. And I would like to add tags, and preferably crosslinks between people that know eachother.

    @Jennifer: Gmail surprised me as far as contact information goes. I never really took a good look at it. It doesn’t really satisfy my needs, but it’s worth to check it out some more.

  4. Mike Rohde

    Thu 2007.09.06

    Might be worth investigating 37signals tool, Highrise, which takes a little different approach to managing contacts and relationships:

    http://www.highrisehq.com/

    They have a free version so you can check it out, and paid versions if you like it.

    Tot schrijfs! :-)

  5. Lodewijkvdb

    Fri 2007.09.07

    Hi Mike,
    Highrisehq looks very interesting. Haven’t tried it out yet, but I’m definitely going to. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

    I love the work you did for Problogger by the way!

  6. Isaac Bowman

    Mon 2007.10.29

    I was locked to Gmail (desktop and mobile) but now I love blackberry Contacts for one reason…. when I type in a name it finds ALL contacts with that search string ANYwhere in the title. Soooo every contact I add gets a list of terms added to their ‘Job Title’. Its too far off the screen to read but it sorts.
    * Everything gets a city tag
    * I list the product that the person supports
    * everything else I can think of…

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