One such tool for Ubuntu Linux is Ubuntu One. UbuntuOne is not just a music store or a means to sync pictures and music. With UbuntuOne you can also keep your contacts in sync. This is especially easy when you are using Evolution (there is something to be said about using the default applications). In this article I am going to show you how you can keep your Evolution contacts in sync with UbuntuOne so you can use those same contacts on any Evolution groupware suite that happens to be connected to your UbuntuOne account.

First things first

The first thing you have to do is make sure you have yourself a UbuntuOne account. NOTE: For more information on UbuntuOne check out the UbuntuOne content on Ghacks. After you have your account set up make sure you add your machine to your account. To do this open up the UbuntuOne Preferences window (click System > Preferences > UbuntuOne) and then click “Manage account” from the account tab. This will take you to your UbuntuOne account page where you can then add your machine to the account. Leave the UbuntuOne Preferences Window open (you’re not done with it yet).

Once the machine is added click on the Services tab in the UbuntuOne Preferences window. In this tab you will see a few services that are available for the account (Bookmarks, Broadcast Message Archive, Contacts, File Syncronization). You will need to make sure Contacts is checked (You can enable any of those services you want of course).

Now that you have the service set up, let’s start working with Evolution.

Evolution

Click on the Contacts tool in Evolution. You should see two different sets of contacts by default:

• CouchDB (UbuntuOne)
• On This Computer (Personal)

CouchDB is a document-oriented database that UbuntuOne uses for contacts. Select that database (click UbuntuOne) and see if you have any contacts listed. If not you need to copy your contacts from Personal to UbuntuOne. To do this follow these steps:

1. Select the Personal contacts by clicking Personal.
2. Click Actions > Copy all contacts to…
3. Select UbuntuOne.
4. Click OK.
5. Walk through the various steps either adding or merging a contact to ensure you don’t duplicate your contacts.

Now you have to start using the UbuntuOne contacts as your default. If you do not do this you will continue to add contacts to your Personal contacts which will not be automatically migrated to your UbuntuOne contacts. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click on the UbuntuOne address book.
2. Righ-click the UbuntuOne contacts and select Properties.
3. Check “Mark as default address book”.
4. Make sure Desktop CouchDB is selected under Server.
5. Click OK.

That’s it! You will want to do the same thing for all of your machines that use UbuntuOne and you want to keep your contacts in sync.

Final thoughts

Keeping your contacts in sync will go a long way to keep you from having to always take extra steps to make your work more efficient. If your machine is already attached to your UbuntuOne account, it’s a no-brainer to make the switch to syncing your Evolution contacts.

This results in a handful of independent contact databases, that are not linked to each other and often contain duplicate contacts.

Thunderbird Contacts is a new add-on by the Mozilla Labs Team that is based on Firefox Contacts. The add-on tries to evolve ” the address book of Thunderbird beyond what it currently is today”.

The idea behind the add-on originates from the fact that contact information are not necessarily only available in the address book of the email client, but also on websites and services.

Thunderbird Contacts currently supports services like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo!, LinkedIn and Plaxo, next to the Thunderbird address book and the Mac address book.

thunderbird contacts

The add-on adds a contacts link under the Tools menu after installation. Contacts opens in a new tab in the email client with four sub-tabs available that lead to the add-on’s functionality.

The default page, Contact Services, allows a Thunderbird user to connect the email client to supported web services in order to pull contact information from them.

The add-on automatically retrieves the information, and tries to merge the new contact information with existing information. In addition to that, the contact finder services setting tries to find additional information about a contact by trying to find a Facebook profile, Twitter account or Flickr profile among others.

Options are to enable finder services automatically when contacts are first added, when a contact is viewed, or when requested from the contact detail view.

contact finder services

A video has been created to demonstrate Thunderbird Contacts.

Thunderbird users who want to try Thunderbird Contacts can download the add-on from the Thunderbird add-on repository. The add-on is only compatible with Thunderbird 3.1x to 3.2x versions.

Enter Mozilla Contacts, a prototype add-on that aims to achieve just that for the web browser. The add-on basically provides Firefox users with an option to manage and access their contacts in the web browser.

Contacts uses a browser based database that “stays in sync with your address books”. It currently supports Gmail, Twitter and the Mac OS address bar with additional address books to be included in the future. A generic importer for computer address books is also provided.

All contacts can be viewed directly in the web browser. More interesting than this feature are the two following ones that have been implemented into the add-on.

The add-on offers an email auto-completion option whenever an email address needs to be entered into a web form. Suggestions will be displays on screen that the user can use to speed up the process.

Security conscious users will like the ability to restrict website access to contacts. Think of the “invite your contacts to our service” options on sites like Facebook. Instead of letting the service retrieve all contacts it is now possible to select the contacts from a list that the service should have access to.

Check out the announcement post over at the Mozilla Labs website for additional information about the add-on and a download link to install it in your Firefox web browser.

The address book software will automatically recognize possible duplicate contact information and display a dialog to the user that proposes a few ways how to deal with the data including options to skip or edit.

Important features offered by Open Contacts include:

• Unlimited data fields to store any contact info. Along with predefined fields, you may add unlimited data fields grouped by section.
• Manage relationships between individuals, organizations and departments.
• Comprehensive Categories. You may click on a category to view contacts of the category, or right click to list contacts of subcategories recursively.
• Search through any data field, and search birthday of people.
• Interact with Windows applications of telephony, Skype, emailing or Web/File browsing etc.
• Map service with Google Maps. You may use either single line address or multi-line address. Yahoo Maps and Microsoft Live Maps are also supported through custom action plug-in programs.
• Print contact info and labels on papers of different sizes.
• Import from MS Outlook, Outlook Express (WAB), Eudora, Netscape/Mozilla Thunderbird, XML (xCard), CSV, LDIF, Vista and vCard.
• Export to indented text, CSV, Excel, vCard, XML (xCard), HTML, hCard and XFN (XHTML Friends Network).
• Portable. You may bring your address book database and the program in an external device such as a USB flash disk, and run the program on any Windows PC.
• LAN supports for multiple users in Local Area Network, using true Client/Server architecture.

Quite a few can be very interesting for users in specific work situations. The only real downside to this excellent address book software program is the rather outdated user interface that feels slow in certain situations. Open Contacts is available as a free download from the developer’s homepage.

You can enable this is the labs settings in your account, and once you do, you should see some suggestions come up. For me this didn’t work perfectly because I actually rarely email groups, let alone more groups. If you use email mostly for client-to-client work you probably won’t find this too useful, but in an office-like work environment this could be really handy.

For myself I’d rather like a better contact management system instead, something better integrated with the compose screen, maybe once that can read your first line and decide on the recipient. You could tell Gmail that if you begin a letter with “Hi Daniel” you want to send an email to me. Based on names this could be automated to some extent too. Do you have any contact feature suggestions for Gmail you’d love to see?

As some of the more regular readers may know, I’m all into the whole ‘portable’ thing, and am constantly looking for ways to use stealthy software, sync my data or access it wherever I go. So it’s not surprising I stumbled across the SyncKolab Thunderbird extension some time ago looking for a possibility to sync my contacts across different computers as easy as my bookmarks using Foxmarks. Didn’t turn out that time, I just couldn’t get it to work.

But now, you may have guessed it already where this is heading, version 1.0 is out and, what can I say, it works like a charm, and not only for my contacts, but for my lightning-powered to-do’s and calendar items as well!

The whole thing uses the Kolab ‘protocol’ (in lack for a better word), which uses iCals and E-Mails containing xml-files to, among other things, store the items in your IMAP-Folder.

There’s a pretty good tutorial how to set it up as well, but it’s principle is rather simple. Choose an IMAP-Account, the items you want to have synced (contacts, calendar and to-do; the latter two require lightning to be installed) and where to store the data in the IMAP folder structure. I used a new folder named Synckolab containing subfolders for each of the groups, though I don’t know if it’s necessary to split them up.

Conflicts are resolved by using a pre-defined setting (always use server-side or client-side), or by asking the user, which is always my personal weapon of choice.

The whole thing also works with a specialized server component as well as different clients such as KDE’s Kontact for instance. Check out the wikipedia-entry if you’re interested.