Plaxo 3.0 – All about sync
I’ve been using Plaxo to organize and keep my contacts up to date for over a year now. Of course, I did so intense adverse criticism from the likes of Jason Calacanis and Web 2.0 snob par excellence Michael Arrington notwithstanding.Plaxo’s value proposition is novel yet incredibly simple–use the service to organize your contacts, update all your contacts with any changes in your contact information (new Phone number, new Email address etc.), and request/receive updates on changes on any of your contacts’ details.
Pretty straightforward if you ask me, but it turns out that Plaxo’s request update function was too easy to use. The service got a lot of flak from users who got inundated with update requests and were quick to call the company out on sending tons of notification that many deemed to be spammish.
But if you’re anything like me who spent numerous years in Business Development and Marketing, you’d have over 500 contacts in your address book, a good number of which you consider to be business prospects, your contention would be that you take the good with the bad and there is no better service out there to keep your address book organized and updated.
All about Sync Points
The new Plaxo features a spiffy new AJAX interface which is a marked improvement from the old version. This, however, in no way improves the speed of the service. It’s far from being a backpackit in terms of speed and usability and is more along the lines of the pretty, albeit slow Yahoo mail beta.
Additional features from Plaxo’s recently acquired startup Hipcal are welcome bonuses. The to-do list and functional calendar perfectly syncs with OSX’s calendar and makes up for a solid, synergistic online time management system.But perhaps the biggest addition in this release is Plaxo’s ability to do automated multi-way syncs between:
- Google (starting with Calendar, with Gmail coming soon)
- Microsoft (Outlook, Outlook Express, Vista Mail, and Hotmail)
- Yahoo! (Mail and Calendar)
- Mac OSX Sync Services (for Address Book, iCal, and iPhone)
- AOL (AIM and Classic AOL)
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Mobile phones
This is a huge step from Plaxo’s earlier rudimentary import/export system and is an extremely useful feature for people who work across multiple machines and platforms.
okay mike, what’s wrong? talk? when did you start preaching about internet apps?
ive used plaxo before but I found it slow
Since they blackmailed him, threatening to reveal this secret gastric bypass operation he had done in the slums of tondo. It’s bad enough that he keeps coughing blood and bile all over the place but the sad fact is that – IT’S NOT WORKING MIKEY!!!1
Oooooookay.
Weiiirdooooo
Fuck you and you.