I’m currently reading Keith Ferrazzi’s book, “Never Eat Alone”, and decided to act upon his seemingly obvious tip to keep track of the people I know and want to know.
I have no intention of becoming a serial “networker”, but I do love meeting people. I love studying the chemistry between people as their relationship grows from stranger to friend. The problem is, I haven’t talked to many people I’ve met in a long time. I don’t necessarily feel any more distant to them, but I wish I could get closer. With 1000+ friends on facebook, 600+ on my phone and contacts from the five email addresses I’ve had in the past, where do I start?
Organize everything.
I’m going to sync all of my contacts between my computer, social networks, gmail and my phone. Then, I’m going to organize my contacts into groups. Finally, I’m going to keep this shit organized.
This is how I did it:
1) Use MobileMe to sync phone and computer. This is a cloud syncing service that Apple provides for $99/mo. One of the many things it syncs is your contacts. Using MobileMe, the native address book in my computer and my phone is synced at all times; meaning any time I add a contact on my phone, it’s available on my computer immediately, and vice versa. Additionally, I can sign into my account at me.com from any internet ready device to browse through all of my contacts.
2) Use Address Book to sync computer and gmail. Address book is a native app installed in all apple computers. Go check it out in your applications folder and save it to your dock. Under preferences, you can select sync with Gmail, type in your credentials, and boom. You’re all synced.
3) Used MyPhone+ to sync Facebook to phone. I initially wanted to sync Facebook to my address book on my computer (it seems cleaner that way), but couldn’t find a solution that satisfied what I was looking for, so decided to go with syncing Facebook to my phone. The Facebook iPhone app has a feature that allows you to sync photos and a link to their facebook page, but there are other apps out that let you sync more information. After shopping around, I settled on MyPhone+, which allows you to sync photo, birthday, company, job title, current address, website, and status. What’s more important to me is phone number and email, but whatever, that doesn’t exist, yet.
4) Download all LinkedIn contacts from my LinkedIn App. Don’t know if that was a good idea, but I downloaded 264 contacts from LinkedIn to my phone.
5) Sync everything again and again via MobileMe. I’ve been syncing things with both my phone and my computer, which is very likely to end in disaster somehow. So every step along the way, I make sure to sync them with MobileMe.
6) Use Address Book to merge duplicates. Address book has an easy way to merge duplicates. It looks for the exact name and merges all of their contact info. I add nicknames as middle names to people with the same name, so they don’t end up being one person on my phone.
7) Now that everything is merged, organized contacts into groups using Address Book. I’m using Address Book to sync everything because (1) MobileMe is the center of my crazy syncing cycle and (2) I get full advantage of the screen estate a laptop provides. I’m currently about to start this step… but then I decided to write a blog post instead.
Okay, back to work.
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