Recently, it's occurred to me that I'd really love to be able to integrate my address book more with the social tools I use online. For example, Quicksilver makes it easy for me to go to a person's card in my address book and send them email, chat with them via IM, or copy their snail mail address or phone number. But what if I could, from the same screen, view their del.icio.us bookmarks, or their Flickr photos?
At first I was thinking that these would need to be customized fields, but then I realized that it's just an issue of adding additional URLs. Which would be simple, except that in Address Book you can't add more than one URL. That's stupid. Most of us have more than one URL that we'd like associated with us (or with others).
So, is there a plugin or hack for Address Book that allows adding additional URLs? So that QS will recognize them as launchable URLs? And if not, could someone please write one?
What a great idea! I immediately opened Address Book before I had clicked through to your post and found what you did. Hey Apple -- or someone -- can we have that feature?
M.
This sounds like a job for LazyWeb.
Maybe suggest to the quicksilver folks that the address book plugin should scan the notes section for URLs as well, and just add them there.
The chances of getting Apple to change something for such a small group of people is slim.
I suppose you could just add custom fields to the email address area: I dunno how QuickSilver will handle that, since I don't use it.
The Outlook world needs this too. I've been thinking that contact managers need to be made more flexible to handle ever-expanding types of information I want to keep about my contacts. There is the obvious "standard" stuff like name, address, phone, email. But how many phone numbers? How many addresses?
I'd like to see something that let me add properties to a contact. Those properties might be replicants of "standard properties," or they might be new text properties I want to manage for people (like a Skype name). How many different IM names do people carry?
Alan, I don't think it's for a small group of people. Even without Quicksilver in the mix, being able to associate multiple URLs with someone is as important as associating multiple emails or IM user names (which you can do).
What's odd is that many other fields in the address book offer the ability to create additional entries--phone numbers, email, IM, relationship. It doesn't seem like it would be much of a change in the app to simply extend that functionality to URLs.
Anybody got a contact at Apple they could suggest this to?
Isn't it more a job for FOAF ? I can't recall myself if del.icio.us information has to be in FOAF. But, if so, applications like Quicksilver and the such should be able to parse the FOAF file (not only for your friends network, but also for your noosphere. From a rapid googling, yes, you can do such a thing : http://www.ldodds.com/blog/archives/000122.html
Try a web based Address Book.
I found a good one for a former boss a few years ago and now help out there with the programming.
It supports infinite emails, phones, addresses, etc and currently thru it's groups allows bulk emails to a group.
In process for next release is multi language and after that such things as address labels, etc.
Best of all, you have access wherever, which was the requirement form said former boss. It is The Address Book @:
http://www.corvalis.net/address/
David, the problem with a web-based address book is that there are still times when I'm not online and I need access to my contact information. Also, the OS X Address Book is beautifully integrated with other OS X apps, so I really don't want to switch. All I want is for a fairly simple feature to be enabled. :(
It will never happen in Mac OS X unless enough people request it. The good news is that Apple provides a good way to request this feature, and that it's probably a valuable one that might make it into a future Address Book. It's a limitation I encountered almost immediately after using Apple Address Book in Panther.
Also, note the implications of Apple having its own browser (URL/bookmark management), URLs for Rendezvous/OpenTalk-based services, and also .Mac sync services.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/sync.html
... it seems like there could be some "killer app"-style integration that someone could do.
Make your requests to Apple on-line:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback
If you have an Apple Developer Connection (ADC) account (they're free!), you can submit feature requests there.
You can also request features if you have a valid warranty or AppleCare by calling in your request, and that should be free. They have a category for it. If you're in education, you can call their education support line for warranty fulfillment:
http://www.rit.edu/~wwwits/services/desktop_support/mac/applecareeducationsupport.html
There's strength in numbers (of requests).
I'd also urge Microsoft Entourage users to use Help > Send Feedback on Entourage. At least Entourage gives you a home a work URL. And, if Entourage just handled URL objects independently, you could manage them in association with contacts via categories or even the new 2004 Project Center.