How much overlap is there between your Facebook “friends” and the real contacts in your mobile phone’s address book? If those two world’s align and you have an iPhone, you might want to check out a nifty utility called Photo Phonebook (iTunes link). It finds the matches between the people in your iPhone’s contact list and your Facebook friends and downloads their Facebook profile photos. (Right now, there is a limit of 100 photo downloads because of memory constraints on the iPhone, but the developers are working to fix that).
Next time a Facebook friend calls, their Facebook photo appears on your iPhone. It also appears in the address book. When your friends change their profile photos on Facebook, they change on your iPhone as well. HotorNot founder James Hong, who is an adviser to the developers behind the app, says:
The novel idea is for people to basically start publishing their picture to other people’s phones, taking control of what picture represents them. Sort of like if you could control the ringtone that plays when you called someone, rather than them setting it.
Photos taken with the iPhone can also be published directly to Photo Phonebook’s directory. The plan is support more phones in the future, and other image sources ranging from photos to avatars. This seems like the type of feature Facebook itself should make available through its mobile apps. It would also be much more useful if you could download and sync phone numbers between your Facebook contact list and your mobile phone. But then you might actually have to talk to some of your so-called Facebook friends.
FYI
Thats not an accurate screenshot – with the latest carrier update and the latest firmware 2.1.1 the photos are not full size but up in the top right next to the caller’s name.
That is an accurate screen shot. I noticed that the iphone commercials you see on TV always show the mini pic up in the top right but I could never get that to work. My pics would always be full screen. Then I did a sync with Outlook and any pictures I had in Outlook would display in the top right. I don’t know what other apps show the pics in the smaller size but that’s one of ‘em.
And I use Visuals. I think I paid .99 but it works. There are other free apps in the app store, just do a search for Facebook.
I tried this app out, but it requires me to create yet another account in order sync a few photos. No thanks,
i have been using viringo for a couple of months now.. works great and i believe u can just use ur facebook credentials..
Vringo is great. It doesn’t require you to get a new account anywhere and it works like a charm. Vringo FTW Photo Phonebook FTL.
Vringo does look promising, but the customer reviews scared me off.
I’ve been using FacePhone. It’s just the best app for syncing with Facebook on iPhone. Much better than Vringo and other crap apps. You get what you pay for!
http://www.ulti...e.com/facephone
I’ve already been doing this with with a program called FacebookSync. It’s a program for Leopard that syncs address book data with your facebook contacts. Probably easier to manage on the computer than on the iphone though I’ll probably give the iphone app a try just to see.
http://facebook...oftonic.com/mac
There’s also “AddressBookSync” (http://www.appl...ssbooksync.html) which works very well and there’s no need to create accounts. Only caveat is that it’s a desktop software (no iPhone involved) but of course once the desktop AddressBook has the pictures, next sync with iPhone brings them all in. Also, no limit to how many pictures.
facebooksync is not supported since 2007 (http://osx.iuse...pp/facebooksync)
addressbooksync works great btw
That’s really cool, easier to sync photos with contacts.
TechFilipino
Sweet, I will deff check it out. I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time.
Thanks for the heads up. I just installed this. Seeemed to work well.
Two complaints:
-Yet another login/pw to create and remember, why not just use the facebook login?
-It didn’t warn me before overwriting existing photos set for contacts
Integration between Facebook and iPhone, two hot platforms.
The bad news is that it’s a niche times niche with lots of competition. The net result is small. Try simple multiplication.
I want to kiss Jill.
me too
I have been doing this for quite a while using frinedsync from the app store. No need to create a new account it just uses your facebook login.
It lets you choose whether you want the app to overwrite existing images and it syncs their birthdays as well.
http://www.omni...com/friendsync/
Ok, is it just me or is PPB cropping and resizing photos in a weird shape?
Old news – shame on you tech crunch – that’s not why we’re reading you site…
Other products have been giving this for decades on iPhone and others – there’s Vringo for iPhone (which is what I’m using) and I remember seeing another option.
In that case – I’m wondering what’s the “journalistic value” of this article? there’s probably value to someone? (definitely not for the readers)
Uh the Vringo app on the iPhone has been doing this for months and it doesn’t require you to sign up for another account either. Problem solved awhile ago.
Jill is hot! I bet she is smart also. Will you marry me?
Not working for me
This is indeed a great app. but if you have a mac i better recommend AdressbookSync which does it on your computer more efficiently and syncs with local adressbook and the iphone (synced via itunes) http://danaucla...ddressbooksync/
And for Windows Mobile users, an app called FoneBook has been doing this with Outlook/Facebook for ages.
Existing apps out there just suck pictures from facebook, and don’t give me control of what photo goes to which friends for higher cuatomization. The spirit behind this is more about publishing your photo than about being a simple download tool.
Of course none of that extension is built yet
. But the vision of this project is broader than this first revision.
Login required because not everyone in the world (think china) is on facebook (yet).
Whether it is niche x niche, I cannot say. Nobody has ever built a tool enabling people to self-publish and microtarget their photo onto other people’s phones so I don’t think either of us can truly know the demand.
We just thought it was a fun idea that we’d like to have, so we built it. Not everything in life has to be a business you know
Yet another reason why we should all think twice about what avatar image we use… and take a picture of ourselves without simply cutting a picture with two people down the middle. Nothing I hate more than seeing avatar photos that have half a face and a random hand on a shoulder for the person actually focused on in the photo.
I think syncing contacts with Google is causing the weird resize and crop to thumbnail issue.. can anyone confirm?
bad business idea.
Über I think that is right. We noticed it started doing that on my phone too recently after I started using google sync.
I agree
Can this go hand-in-hand if you are already syncing Contacts with G-Mail contacts?
Hmm, and you can’t disable that in google at all, right? hmmm…
Too bad I’m a not a Facebook friend with Jill
Doesn’t work, 404, and all kinds of other problems…
Thanks for the feedback! We are really happy with all the people trying the service. At the same time we are working hard to keep the service up and running smoothly.
Only ugly girls are on Facebook. This is not accurate.
This seems clunky at best. Synchronization between built-in phone contacts and services likes Facebook and LinkedIn should be supported at the core of platform, not through some 3rd party apps. Look at what Palm is doing with the Pre. That’s the way to go. It’s a difficult move for Apple as they have their own mobileme offering.
It’s getting to be a bit of a problem to discover which applications are good and which are not.
I don’t like the fact that I can go to http://photophonebook.org/ppb/ and type in a phone number and not only does it give me their name but also their photo. What is preventing someone from creating a script to go and scrape every phone number and get all the names and photos that go along with it?
Exactly, I see some major privacy issues there.
picture/phone number combinations that are not submitted by the user do not go into the website directory.
in terms of being able to scrape a directory, what directory is that NOT true of? It is the essence of any open directory.
For instance, You can log in to facebook or linkedin or any other social network and search by email address. We can block against dictionary attacks in the same way they presumably would too.
It is probably a good idea for us to ultimately allow for people to unlist themselves from public view though, similar to what the phone company does with whitepages (yet another open directory that you can scrape), thanks for the feedback.
i like the concept but OMG the setup process is painful. do i really need to spend 15 min to get running? and facebook seriously needs to get moving on Connect for the iphone.
The MixSync Mobile application lets you do this (and more) with a wide variety of mobile phones, including Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, iPhone and even Outlook.
http://apps.fac...ok.com/mixsync/
http://www.face...p?id=5494904763
interesting
Just tried, didn’t work very well. Imported three contacts!
So I installed Virgo and it imported most of my contacts. Better interface for sure.
is this the UI for the new hotornot on iphone? i like where this app is going
Core has seen a number of companies doing this sort of live sync to various degrees of efficacy over the past two+ years (Vringo, Mobyko, et al). This is nothing new, especially if you are talking about general background cloud sync (SugarSync, FusionOne, Dashwire, et al).
Vringo is a superior application with a better GUI, in my opinion, for FB profile pic sync and I’m surprised the typically street savvy, market-aware TechCrunch editorial staff didn’t pick that up upon run of the above.
I’m sure we’ll see a paid version of this in the future with all the bugs fixed and better usability.
i hope we fix all the bugs and get better usability, but i don’t think we’ll ever be doing a paid version.
Second on connect for iPhone…
…vringo did it already
Works well enough for me, it’s a great idea.
Who is Jill…anyone know?
http://www.cs.j...u.edu/~creiley/
i like this
There is a much better way to do this if you have a Mac, Adium and MobileMe. Infact with this you can sync avatars from all other IM services too.
Adium (the unified IM for mac) allows you to connect to most IM services, including Facebook. It also offers an option to store the contact data back into the Apple Address Book on the mac. This way it stores even the avatar photos of your friends in the address book.
Now next time MobileMe syncs with your iPhone, Voila! these photos are in your iPhone contacts. Now, if you have the same friends in multiple IM services then you will have to combine them, also another feature on Adium.
I do like what Photo Phonebook offers, but feel that my setup does lot more and does it much more frequently and seamlessly.
what settings do you set under advanced>addressbook> ?
iphone does not stop improving. now you don’t have to take picture of your friends you can just connect on it on your facebook account.
http://www.heal...tedirectory.com
Not working at all, its horrible. First, why all the signing up, is it a phising attack? Secondly, it couldn’t find ANY contact on facebook. And I have around 100 of them. Instead it gave me a list of a few contacts that definitely are NOT on Facebook – but they were presented with MY photo icon. What’s up with that, do i want my own portrait on other contacts? It also offered me to “request” photos from the rest – sounds like sending out Facebook messages to a few hundred Facebook friends – I think NOT.
Seriously, why is it not working at all?
We had some server problems in the morning, things have improved now. We’ve been working hard on keeping things running smoothly. If you still have problems, feel free to email us at support [at] photophonebook [dot] org.
Of course Mobyko has offered this for nearly a year – and not just for iPhones, but also for most popular mobiles. So join in the fun and get your friends’ Facebook photos onto your mobile too.
http://www.face...?id=28621735116
It is a great feature.
I am using FriendSync which does this since long time ago, no need to pay for a new application.
This app is free! And since it also get’s photos from the Photo Phonebook directory you get higher quality images for contacts that are on it.
I’m surprised that this article missed all the existing apps that have been doing virtually the same thing as Photo Phonebook for months (like AddressBookSync, FoneBook or my company, Vringo).
Thanks to everyone who’s given us a shout-out in the comments!
Took three tries, but did finally load all the images next to the names and gave me a button to save. I noticed that 5 out of the 12 or so on the screen were wrong. Same first or last name, but not the right people. Fail. Over to MixSync Mobile to get this done.
Wow interesting!