Syakhir Jaafar

If I raise this question, how would you feel? Is it okay for me to have it? Am I classified as a stalker? Am I creepy? How close do I need to be before it’s ’safe’ for me to have it?

Over the few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we keep our contacts. I have my schoolmate, college buddies, coworkers, business contacts and relatives to keep track of. So in theory:

From the image above, what optimal for me to have is just:

• Name
• Phone Numbers
• Email addresses

These information is not that hard to grab. When you meet a buddy, you can just go ahead and ask them. Or ask somebody else for them. “Hey, do you have Johnny’s phone number?” then you call them and get their email. Simple. Then we have the hard part:

• Birthday
• Picture
• Address (company and position for business associates)

Go ask a girl about their birthday and they’ll go “He forgot my birthday?” Ask her address and they’ll go “This guy is dangerous.” Ask for a picture and they’ll start treating you as a creepy “hentai”. These are considered private to most, which I think is kind of irony.(I will explain this later) But first, lets see how we can manage the most important data; name, phones and emails.

Ever since Google releases Google Sync, my contact management became so much easier. Google Sync is a service to synchronize your mobile phone data, with you Gmail account. For crappy phone like mine, I can only sync my contacts, which is awesome enough. With this, the “Johnny(+60123456789)” on my phone will be exported to my Google Contacts.

The step are like these:

1. Export your other email services to Google’s.(hint)
2. Clean up repeats, rename, merge and delete on your Google Contacts. (And preferably group them)
3. Run Google Sync on your mobile.(After backing up!)
4. Now your Google Contacts and mobile will be cluttered with repeats, and will be messy. Like “Johnny(+60123456789)” from your mobile, and “Jonathan K.(jonnybgood@blah.com)” from Google Contacts are the same person.
5. Repeat step 2, on your Google Contacts. (Forget everything on your mobile for now)
6. Now delete all your contacts from your mobile. (I know it sounds scary, hence the backup on step 3)
7. Run Google Sync again and you now have your shiny Google Contacts on your mobile. Complete with their email addresses, and more if you add any.

Next time on this series, getting the rest done.

p/s- Comments, retorts, and suggestions are encouraged.