Plaxo Adds Google Support

Alright!!!

GMail is now syncable from Plaxo. I've tried it out and it works. I'm not sure if P4G has a reason for existing now, but I plan on taking the code and what I have learned to sync other systems into Plaxo. The next project may be "Mobical" sync so we will have a way to use Plaxo with SyncML.

Thanks everyone for trying P4G!

Sincerely, Greg

Gmail Groups, Outlook Categories, and Tags

Gmail has "Groups". Outlook has "Categories". But both definitions really describe "tags". Tags became popular with Flickr and Picasa for describing photo data. Here is an example:

You have a picture of a boat on a Lake in Seattle. Your tag descriptions might look like "Boat", "Lake", and "Seattle".

Someone out there may find this picture and add the tags, "Summer", "Water", "Outdoors", and "Yacht".

Tags have increased the popularity on favorite sharing sites like del.icio.us and video sites like YouTube. Now most every blog entry has tags to organize the data, making it easier to find what you are looking for, and to be able to filter easily on a lable.

Our contacts are no different. Think of your contacts like any other data that needs organizing. If it is a contact that should be on your phone, make sure it has the category "My Phone", if it is a favorite, or family, or work, or college or a combination of multiple categories, get them ready now for tags now.

Plaxo4Gmail will be looking at "Categories" in its next version and converting them to Gmail's "Groups".

Gmail address book packet data

I just found a new way to access the Gmail address book data. The trick was shared on a different site and may be a glimpse to an address book API.

Log into Gmail and enter this address:

http://video.google.com/contacts/data/contacts?thumb=true&groups=true&show=ALL&enums=true&psort=Name&max=500&out=js&jsx=true

Google video is using contact data from Gmail so you can share the video with your Gmail contacts. The interesting thing is all the contact data is there, not just email addresses.

The page the script is lifted from is here.

-Greg

Minor Change V1.02

Whats different: Login screen will now properly show error messages generated by Plaxo to assist in troubleshooting.

Plaxo Updates its servers

Plaxo updated their servers on Monday, Feb 26, 2007. This caused a bit of a glitch for new users of the Plaxo4Gmail script. They have been prevented from getting a Unique Global Identifier for their Plaxo4Gmail sync engine. Many new users have been reporting to me they are getting a "513" error in the JavaScript or Error Console in Firefox or that they click on the "sign in" for the first time and nothing happens. I've spoken with Plaxo about the issue and they are looking into the error.

This is only affecting new users of the script. Existing users will continue to sync with Plaxo unless they erase the cookies for Gmail.

Minor update V 1.01b

Whats changed: a minor change in the script lets Google domain sites use the script. Thanks to ChicagoMicro (Julian) for the email account to test it on.

Minor Update V 1.01a

Whats updated: On 405 issued from Plaxo, (Bad Anchor) The script will reverse back to the missed anchor then go forward.

A better routine for adding new entries without email addresses has been developed. The old way occasionally caused contacts to show up twice when doing a new full sync with the server.

Prediction: White pages will be obsolete in 3 years

I just received my local phone book. What a waste of paper. I don't even have a landline. It just showed up on my doorstep in a plastic bag yesterday.

When I looked in it, my cellphone numbers are not listed. No surprise there. And looking at it, the yellow pages outnumbered the white pages 5 to 1. If someone was trying to find me, I do not exist in any white pages in the whole world. However if you did a Google search for me, you'd have my contact information in about 1 click on my public vCard page, vCardPlus [+!].

Being public about your persona is nothing to be frightened about. If you are in the white pages, you get those stupid phone calls around dinner. If you have your email posted in plain text, you get spam. What's the difference? Gmail's spam filter is as good as anybodies and I ignore the junk mail inbox anyway. I've never set up one filter and it works brilliantly.

So what do we need white pages for? Nothing. The white pages can't connect you to a person, only a house and I eat my dinner in peace every night.

The Gmail Hub to the Plaxo Hub

Why do we sync? Why do we need one set of organized contacts in multiple locations? In a world that is getting increasingly digital, the duplication of the same information means we spend more time searching for what we need to collaborate or complete a task rather than focusing on that task or contact.

When all our communication devices, address books, organizers, schedulers, planners are aware of each other by using the power of the network, we focus our energy on the task, not searching for the most recent contact information.

Each contact entry represents a person or organization that we have familiarity with. I may only need my auto mechanic or Doctor once a year, but I'd like to be able to contact him with his most up to date information from the most convenient source possible.

I look for hubs in this wheel of connectivity. Gmail is a hub. Plaxo is a hub. So are Yahoo! and MSN. The reason I choose Gmail and Plaxo is:

1. the options they provide,
2. and absence of overt advertising.

Gmail and Google advertise, but it is relevant to what I'm doing and therefore acceptable.

Lower down the list for me is interface and design. I still place high expectations on design but for me it is mere eye candy and I'd rather have speed over graphics. When an application has everything; speed, connectivity, intuitive interface, and expandable capabilities, you get Mozilla Firefox, iPods, Google Maps, Plaxo, iPhone or Scrybe. When it doesn't, you get most every other POS out there designed by committee, crippled by accountants & lawyers, and polluted with ads.

Sync settings I'd like to emulate with Plaxo4Gmail

I found a company called Spanning Partners who make a Mac iSync plugin for Gmail Calendars. I really like the appearance shown in the screenshots. I think I could emulate it's functionality for Plaxo4Gmail. I may add it to the list of the items I'd like to add on the next version.

Thunderbird, Firefox, Gmail, Plaxo, Greasemonkey and Plaxo4Gmail

I love Gmail. I love Firefox. I use Thunderbird occasionally. I'd use it much more if I could get Gmail's free pop3 email AND my Gmail contacts to stay sync'd with it. Nothing is worse than discovering you have a contact, but it is at home in Thunderbird.

Enter Plaxo. Plaxo allows me to sync my contacts with Thunderbird to the Plaxo address book database using a FREE tool bar.

Plaxo4Gmail connects to Plaxo and gets my address book into Gmail where I want it. This makes Thunderbird much more accessible to me and now I am loving it too!

22 days and counting...

I have been using Plaxo4Gmail in it's current form for 22 days and have not felt the need to go in and make any code adjustments, yet. I add - delete - edit my contacts all the time from different sync address books with success. Here is my latest example:

I just got a new FREE RAZR V3r with myFaves from my employer, T-Mobile (what a perk!), and needed to get all my current contacts in it. The new V3r has a much improved Ph. Book, which includes NEW fields for Street Addresses, Nickname, and Birthday.

My old phone had some discrepancies between the Ph. Book and the Plaxo/Gmail/Outlook/Thunderbird/AIM/PocketPC/ Contacts List. I had added about 30 new peoples phone numbers to it. Contacts in my phone but not in my Plaxo? This had to be fixed.

For me, this situation is a minor inconvenience. I use Motorola Phone Tools software to get everything back current. MPT links to Outlook. Using MPT, I updated Outlook which in turn updates Plaxo, which in turn updates everything and when I opened Gmail, all 30 of my V3r Ph Book entries were now in Gmail's Contacts. At the same time there were 4 new email addresses in Plaxo that were updated to the new Motorola V3r.

Cool. I also discovered a way to get around the whole picture bug that has given me such headaches. The phone number only entries did not suffer from it. They all got the proper ghost image on Gmail. Hmmmmmm..... Maybe I will be updating the code after all.

Adding a technorati profile...

My Technorati Profile is here.

Security Issues and me... and you!

Is Plaxo4Gmail a security risk? My answer, yes and here is why.

When running this script, it shares your contacts with another site. If you got an unauthorized copy from anywhere EXCEPT this website, the script could be altered to send your contacts to a different site.

So don't install this script if you cant understand the code. This was first brought to my attention on the Google Blogscoped site from this entry. Practice safe hex. Always trust who you are getting your code from. If you don't trust me, (and why should you?) don't use the script.

That being said, I'd like to thank Plaxo and Mark Jen for the recent invite to beta test some of their unreleased sync products. I'm honored to be able to lend my assistance!

Update: 02/25/07
This illustrates what I mean by my original comments. Plaxo4Gmail does not use this hack as my script does not have a cross-site scripting (XSS) issue. But I though it was good article and worth the read.

Total contacts don't match up

If you have "Groups" in Gmail, they get listed as an item in "Contacts". No worries, Plaxo4Gmail ignores the groups when syncing.

For example, if I have 55 contacts and 3 groups, my total items on the "All Contacts" tab would read something like "58 of 58". When I open Outlook and look at the items in the status bar when in "Contacts", it reads "55 Items".

This is correct behavior.

How to install the script

First, you will need the Firefox Browser,
then install Greasemonkey, (visit diveintogreasemonkey.org if this is your first script)
click on the Plaxo4Gmail link in the "Downloads" sidebar of this site and follow the instructions.

Now open Gmail in Firefox and go to "Contacts".
You will see a "Plaxo Login" link next to the area that says "Add Contact",
click on it and log into Plaxo.

Now the "Plaxo Login" changes to "Sync".
Click on "Sync" and your Gmail contacts will link with Plaxo.
You only have to click "Sync" in the future if your changes are not recording properly with Plaxo or vice versa.

The bigger picture

This script may be the first of its kind and I like that. We have all seen toolbars that attach themselves to the browser, and widgets that get one way information address book information from a site. Until this script, web based address books were limited to importing and exporting contact data.

With Plaxo4Gmail, everything changes. This is truly a web site plugin. We leverage the address book linking capabilities of Plaxo, the script injection power of Greasemonkey and the features of AJAX and xmlhttp to get two sites to communicate with each other, if and when the USER (you!) want them to.

We don't force everyone to have the sync feature. We need no agreements between the host site and the sync partner. We don't have to use screen real estate like you do with toolbars. The features we need look organic to the site we want them on.

I imagine future developers will look to Plaxo4Gmail as a template for other such projects.

I can imagine the day where a very basic site is created. The user chooses which site plugins he wants to add from a "features plugin" page. I'd ask myself, "what local code do I want to run when I come to this site?", and "what capabilities does this site provide that are best for me?".

I could even generate custom plugins for clients of my site that that validate against my server so pirating of plugin code isn't an issue. This could really be the income flow web developers and programmers are looking for when imaging the future of the web.

I don't know if the creator of Greasemonkey ever envisioned his fantastic plugin as the future of web development beyond AJAX, but I sure do.

Advantages

With Greasemonkey, we get the same capabilities to sync as if the script lived on the Gmail site. Greasemonkey and my script are only available for the Firefox browser. My current script is set up for the Live Plaxo site and standard with or without chat Gmail site.

Now we can allow Plaxo users to sync with websites without having to create agreements with the host. The information being exchanged is not proprietary to the site, so I think this is the best way to give web based address books the ability to communicate with Plaxo.

The Greasemonkey advantage includes:

1. No toolbar on the browser eating up screen real estate
   
2. Plaxo setting integration in Gmail settings and a Plaxo sync button on the pages that need it.
   
3. No asking for a Gmail password or user name as you have to be in the Gmail site in order for the script to work.
4. Leave Gmail and the script stops.
5. Undetectable by the host if the Greasemonkey script is present.

Adding a contact

Much of the contact data you add in Gmail will translate directly to Plaxo. I call this data "Basic" data.
Basic data includes:

• Display Name
• Default Email (*matches Work Email 1 or Personal Email 1)
• Notes (**)
  
• Personal
• Email 1 (*alternate default)
• Email 2
• Email 3
• IM
• Phone 1
• Phone 2
• Mobile Phone
• Fax
• Street Address
• Other (**)
  
• Work
• Email 1 (*primary default)
• Email 2
• Email 3
• IM
• Phone 1
• Phone 2
• Mobile Phone
• Pager
• Fax
• Company
• Job Title
• Street Address
• Other (**)
  
• Other
• Phone 1
• Fax
• Street Address
• Other (**)
  

(**)Plaxo4Gmail also recognizes many Plaxo/Outlook fields in the "Other" select choice and in the "Notes" field in Gmail.

Data that has unique field descriptions are known as "Extended" data. P4G's recognition of these field descriptions makes Plaxo and Gmail nearly 100% compatible. The Gmail "Other" data field will not map to Plaxo unless it has a field description. The field description does not get interpreted as contact data, only the information after the colon.

Extended data includes:

• Personal
• Other:
• Web Page:[url]
• Anniversary:[mm/dd/yyyy]
• Birthday:[mm/dd/yyyy]
• Spouse:[text]
• Work
• Other:
  
• Web Page:[url]
  
• Assistant:[text]
• Asst. Phone:[number]
• Department:[text]
• Manager:[text]
• Other
• Other:
  
• Skype ID:[text]
• Skype In:[text]
• Nickname:[text]
• Categories:[text, text, text...]

Finally, there is some incoming data from Plaxo that doesn't need to be mapped. I call this data "Read Only".

Read Only data includes:

• Personal
• Other:
  
• Photo URL:[url]
• Work
• Other:
  
• Photo URL:[url]
• Other
• Other:
  
• Plaxo ID:[number]