TechCrunch has been hard on unified address book provider Plaxo in the past, and probably with due cause, given their previous spam promoting ways, but I am now reevaluating that view based on Plaxo Sync.
I wrote about Plaxo’s improved Sync features back in June; although it sounded good I didn’t really have cause to use it then. Confronted with a “how do I sync various platforms, including the iPhone” problem I hit Google looking for a solution, and I kept finding user recommendations for Plaxo. Plaxo’s Sync tools support a variety of platforms, including Outlook, Internet Explorer (for Yahoo Address Books) Mac OSX and Thunderbird. Unfortunately they can’t sync with Gmail yet, but they can download your contacts from Gmail, although it does sync with Google Calendar.
Plaxo can also download LinkedIn contacts; LinkedIn does offer downloads/ plugins as well but nothing quite as comprehensive as Plaxo. We’ve looked recently at Facebook replacing LinkedIn as a business networking tool, however being able to access LinkedIn connections via Plaxo makes LinkedIn all that much more useful as it delivers access to LinkedIn contacts everywhere, including the iPhone (Plaxo imports into the Mac OSX address book, that can then be synced to an iPhone via iTunes).
The other selling point of Plaxo is the universal contact nature of the product; the ability for people to update their contact details on Plaxo and push that information out to other people is a definite positive.
The basic Plaxo service is free, including the sync functionality. The $49.95 upgrade adds Plaxo support (which if it works well you should never need to use) and duplication filtering. The duplicate filtering tool isn’t brilliant, it missed some duplicates on a test, but after running it a second time it found more; a handy feature but perhaps not worth the $49.95 annual fee.
I agree Plaxo is great, I started using Plaxo as soon as the iPhone was annouced in preparation. I still use Spanning Sync for my calendar syncing though. Syncing all contacts, aol, msn, address book, yahoo, gmail and iPhone.
I use it to sync my contacts at home (thunderbird), work (outlook), windows mobile, *and* my cellphone… not bad at all. They’ve done a decent job with portability.
Maybe I’m missing something….Plaxo seems to be saying here:
https://www.plaxo.com/premium_trial?src=toolbox_linkedin&product=linkedin
that you need to have the Premium subscription to get the LinkedIn Sync?
Jay: You are correct. LinkedIn Sync is part of the Plaxo Premium suite. However, you can try it for free (there’s a 30-day free trial) — and get all your LinkedIn connections into your address book.
Jay - correct.
james - are you using the premium feature to access Plaxo via your cell phone? how does that work? I have a Q and Exchange, so sync’ing is a breeze between the devices - and it is one of the main reasons I am not looking at an iPhone (even though I would like too!).
facebook will subsume and make irrelevant all these other services.
Pity Suckoya Capital is not part of the Facebook ecosystem. Linkedin sucks bigtime. Even Reed Huffman says so. But he is a big shareholder in facebook, so he will do well.
Plaxo’s sync is great but I get too many contacts duplicated. As a matter of fact, as many duplicates as the points of Sync (sync points) - in free version. I think they have this bug built into the free version to prompt the users to buy paid version where the main selling point is de-duplication. Anybody else having the same issue?
I don’t get it. Why would you have 4 different calendars to begin with?
I think the title should have been:
“Mac OSX Address Book + Plaxo + LinkedIn + iPhone = Brilliant”
I was excited by the post until I reached this part:
“…as it delivers access to LinkedIn contacts everywhere, including the iPhone (Plaxo imports into the Mac OSX address book, that can then be synced to an iPhone via iTunes).”
I am on a PC, and I use GMail.
I am a Comcast user and they give out the advanced or premium version of Plaxo for free.
that is great…..as said BRILLIANT
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
We (Plaxo) are working on Gmail contacts sync. Next week, we will have one-way sync working (bringing contacts in from Gmail). But to go the other direction, we’re awaiting an API…
i just got an iphone & recently created a gmail address. currently, i have comcast with my email account setup through microsoft office outlook with plaxo, but am moving my internet to at&t next week. i just added my gmail address as a new acct in outlook, but will it still work at keep my contacts through plaxo, & my calender synced once i cancel my comcast acct? it doesn’t sound like it. it’s so inconvenient to have an email address attached to a specific provider. please tell me outlook won’t become a useless tool if i stick with gmail?
technically challenged
@Trae R.
iPhone also syncs with Outlook, which is what I used to sync up my contacts with my iPhone. And since Outlook syncs with Plaxo, the article is slightly wrong by saying you need Mac OSX address book. You can also sync your iPhone from Windows Address Book and Yahoo Address book, and I’m sure there are others I’m missing. So if Plaxo can sync with those (I think I recall seeing a yahoo sync?) then those options are viable as well.
But looks like you are out of luck with gmail only.
That demo looks awesome. What about supporting Symbian as well? (Not everyone uses an iPhone these days :))
is this via PayPerPost? A bit of a blatant promotion?
Yeah, I noticed this magic combination as well and it’s pretty great. Just as exciting, though, is this combination:
Sonic Living + iCal + iPhone
Sonic Living ingests your itunes library and creates a “wishlist” based on all of the artists. If any of them come near your town, it’ll show up on your wishlist calendar. By subscribing to that calendar’s RSS feed in iCal and syncing iCal to your iPhone, you can get a list of pretty much every show you might be interested in right there in your hand. Especially useful in LIST VIEW.
syncML is alternative for many such cellphone phone book availalbe
Plaxo is great ! You’d be well to get this stuff,right now! Who’d have thought something this good. . .could be so great !
Once spammers, always SPAMMERS!!!!
Although I love Plaxo, I can’t search my contact’s Notes on the plaxo website. So if I need to search for someone on the iphone, I won’t be able to. Plaxo is sooooo close to be my total CRM, but its never quite there.
I sync my Iphone contacts via Itunes…how do I sync my calendar using Plaxo. Exactly what steps do I take to sync to get my Outlook calendar on my Iphone…it won’t sync using Itunes…so I loaded Plaxo…now what?
I’ve noticed one issue, that could be just an oversight on my part, but let me ask you about it: when I add an event/new contact on my iPhone, it gets lost after syncing with Itunes, and then never gets picked up by Plaxo, etc, etc. I cannot seem to find a place for settings when syncing, any suggestions?
LinkedIn sucks! Their techies are idiots and cannot program or fix a programming glitch. Their customer service is non-existant! They are inbred idiots and cancel accounts when they cannot and do not want to solve their system issues. I know of at least 9 people this has happened to.
http://www.linkedinsucks.ning.com