Crumpled Notebook

I’m disappointed with the Gmail labs launched this week. I know this is just what Googlers do in their 20% time, but everything in the lab is nearly useless in function. I mean, who really needs a random signature? Sure it might be fun, but why not working on something like a Signature Picker to start with. The Quick Links could be useful, but Superstars, pictures in chat, custom date format, SNAKEY? Seriously? So, a few of this could be useful to a handful of people like the Quick Links and the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts (the only truly useful one I see on the list). Email Addict? Maybe, but geez, if you need your email program to tell you to take a 15 minute break, you have bigger issues that being addicted to email.

How about some of the following:

• Signature Picker
• Better Contact Manager
• A folder option for all those people who keep screaming about it that can’t figure out labels
• an option to not add every email you send to your address book
• Sub-labels
• message sorter
• notes to yourself in messages
• auto text

Just to name a few upgrades I’d like to see…

So if you know me, there is a good chance you’ve heard me complain about not having a good online contact manager. It drives me nuts. I just simply don’t get why we’ve made so much progress on other things, email, social networks, music, video, etc…yet, something as simple and useful as a contact manager, we get stuck with crap. This isn’t just a complaint because I’m not a fan of GMail’s contact manager (I’m not). Trust me, I’ve tried a lot. I’ve tried Plaxo, I’ve tried that new one KeepM. I’ve tried gmail, yahoo, flexadex, and a string of others that I’ve long forgotten. I’m not saying there isn’t a good one out there. I’m just saying that I haven’t found it yet, and I try out nearly everything that comes along that I see.

So here are my first two qualifiers. 1. It must be web-based (so that rules out Outlook and the like…which I happen to like the style of to some degree) . 2. It must be Free. Although at this point, if someone made a good one, I wouldn’t mind paying a small amount to use it. But in a world of everything online, and free, web-based apps, I don’t see the point in it really.

So, let me tell you what I don’t like about some of the ones I’ve tried to use recently. Currently I am using Gmail’s contact manager. I use it because it would be my preference that my contacts are tied to my email, and since I use Gmail, it’s the obvious candidate and would make my life the simpliest, which, lets face it, that’s what web apps should be about. I also use it because even with all the others I’ve tried, it still meets a few more of my preferences.

The problems with Gmail contacts (in no specific order).

1. It’s just plain ugly. 3 columns means I have to scroll usually (the search is handy though). The worst part about the layout is that it’s the layout that you are stuck with. You can’t change it. People are different and prefer to view their contacts differently (grid, list, expanded, etc…), so why string us to one poorly designed layout?
2. I can’t be in my email and my contacts at the same time. This is a problem because most of the time when I’m trying to add contact information, guess where it is? You got it, it’s in my email. Sure, I can add the email address and name to my contacts with a click of a button, but that doesn’t do me much good for things like phone numbers, addresses, web addresses, fax numbers, job titles, birthdays, etc…Sure, I can copy and paste, but only one thing at a time. That means, for full contact info on the average business contact I have to do the following. I have to copy their company name, go to contacts, look up the person, paste it in. Go back to email, find the office number, go to contacts, find the person, paste it in. Go back to email, find the fax number, go to contacts, find the person, paste it in. And so on and so on with mobile number, office address, and anything else I find noteworthy. Sure, I could take out a pen and paper, write all the information down, and then type it in, but in our “paperless” world, should I really have to? How simple would it be to have an option in the settings that launches your contact manager in a new tab or window, if that is your preference? Or how about you just create a separate application that is a contact manager and happens to be tied into gmail if you use gmail.
3. Okay this one, I just don’t get at all. I put in things like office phone, cell phone, office fax, etc…Which of numbes am I least likely to use? The fax number, right? Okay, I rarely, if ever fax anything. But if I have a business contact, I’ll go ahead and put it in if I have it handy, just in case I ever need it. In Gmail contacts, anytime you add a fax number, it automatically becomes the first number on the list of numbers. Doesn’t matter what order you put them in. If you list it last, save and it’ll show up first. Office fax and home fax both show up before any other phone numbers (if they are present). Now, that may not seem like a big deal, and perhaps it’s not meant to be that way and is just an oversight, but when I pull up a contact to get a phone number, I generally go with the first number in the list because I generally put in phone numbers as such that the first number or the number I’m most likely to call, comes first. If I have a business number and fax number, I would assume the first number would be the actual phone number. There is a reason people list their fax numbers last in signatures, etc…. Like I said, I don’t know if this is an oversight, or if it even happens to anyone but me, but at least with my contacts, that is what happens. I’ve tried different things, and it’s always the same. But it shouldn’t even be a problem because a good contact manager should have been designed with the user preference in mind. I should be able to choose the order I want to list phone numbers.
4. I like the “show recent conversations” feature in the contacts. But again, it takes you straight back to your email with those messages, taking you straight out of whatever you were doing in your contacts. Now, listing the messages below your contact information, without leaving your contact would be a better option I think.

There are other annoyances, but those are the three that drive me batty about gmail. But, I think there is hope for gmail and this is what I think:

• Give the option to open up contacts separately from email
• For the love of Larry and Sergey, fix the fax number showing up first thing
• You have the ability to click and add a contact’s email address, why stop there? If gmail can recognize times and dates enough to ask me if I want to add something to my calendar, or can ask if I want to map an address, why can’t gmail recognize that information for contacts, in particularly, when all the information is already listed in someone’s signature when they email you? I have a work contact with all the info I need, and it’s clearly labeled, phone, fax, email, etc…so let me click to add that to my contact. That would save a lot of going back and forth and copy and pasting. Of course, you might have to tweak it once you’re in there to get all the info to match up, but that is a lot easier than manually adding each and every person’s contact info.
• I like the groups. It’s a good feature, but again, why stop there. Give us the ability to tag things in notes or someplace else. For instance, I want to know which of my friends like to play soccer so I can email them. I can tag them with “soccer” or whatever else, and search those tags and find the people who like to play soccer. To me, that’s not worthy of making a group for since those people aren’t a “group” per se, but it would be a good way to connect certain people. This could be done with things like where they live, birthday months, favorite foods, or just common interests. Again, not things you’d necessarily want to use the Group function for.
• This could be done through tags, but I’d like to see better linking between contacts. Say a husband, wife, and child, all of whom have their own cell phone numbers, work different places ,but someway to link them so that I know they all belong to each other. Otherwise, I’m duplicating all the home or personal info that they share on each one if I list them separately, or just giving that info to one person in the family.
• Lastly, I wish I could just edit in screen in gmail without having to hit the “edit” button up top. Like, maybe have an edit button by each section or something, kinda like facebook. But that is just a minor thing.

I’m ranted out. I’ll finish up why I don’t like some of the other major ones in a 2nd post later today or tomorrow.

This is now officially my favorite site ever (other than my Gmail of course). It’s the PostSecret website. I know, I’ve put stuff up before, but this video is cool for someone who’s never seen it. And if you haven’t seen it, why the heck not? Go look now. Look, here’s another link for you. It’s not the video that makes it my favorite site though. It’s that it’s the first thing I do Sunday mornings. I look forward to it, and am rarely, if never disappointed. Some of the secrets just speak to me, I hear myself saying them. Other disgust me, and a few just shock me. But there is almost always something in there that just makes me smile. So check out the video below. I’m going out to buy one of the books today actually.

Part 7,000:

 So, I love Google, right? I wouldn’t give up my Gmail for anything in the world. I begged and pleaded for a Google Calendar and finally got it. The feed reader has grown on me. But for the love of anything good in this world, can you please work on contact management?! Managing contacts in Gmail sucks. I don’t want to have to click 2-4 times after I’m in the contact page to find the info I need. I want to click on a name and see it all. I don’t want to fill in black boxes with what I want, I want to have the same basic information on ALL my contacts, with the option to add more to a particular one if I see it. I want to separate my work contacts from my personal contacts. I want to separate people with email address from people without email addresses. I don’t want ever single email address I have in my contact list that starts with “N” or whatever, to come up when I type a name that starts with N, just the ones I email a lot. I want labels and colors and different view options.

I don’t want the half-baked lame attempt at contact management you have now. If you really want to be an Office contender, you gotta have the contacts.

Ok. I’m done with my rant. If anyone knows of any gmail hacks or firefox extentions (even though I’d prefer a straight up app since I can’t use firefox at work), please let me know.