Dave who?:

Some of you may be in my address book. Well, to be honest, my address books, since I have several of them.

If you are in my address book, then you are receiving really annoying requests for updates from a service called AccuCard. This helps me keep about 2,000 addresses straight - if you reply.

The trouble is, those address books are in several different operating systems, and on several different devices.

Here's what I worked out to keep it all synchronized. First, a schematic (click on it to get a larger version):




You use a web interface to reply to an e-mail from the AccuCard service.

I review your updates from my PC with a program called CardScan. CardScan automatically synchronizes those changes with the Contacts file in Outlook.

I then synchronize my BlackBerry with Outlook Contacts using Desktop Manager Intellisync.

The BlackBerry serves as an interface between the PC world and the Mac world. A poor solution, but the one I have at hand. Poor because the mapping between all the fields available in Outlook Contacts and the Mac Address Book is not ideal when constrained by the lesser number of fields on the BlackBerry. I fight home/work label switches constantly, and middle initials appear multiple times. Accents are also unpredictable. (See a later post about these problems)

The transfer to my Mac PowerBook is done via PocketMac for BlackBerry. From there, I propagate the address book via .Mac Sync to my other Macs at work and home, and into my iPod.

...just 'cause I have your info doesn't mean I willl write. You have to catch me in the mood, when I am not tired of running all these stupid programs.