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Address Books and Contact Lists

Continuing what has turned into a series of posts based on my experience with the iPhone… I thought I would talk about what I’ve been doing for the last hour or two while I was waiting for something else to downloaded.

I was updating my contact list.

I mentioned in a previous post that my iphone was able to copy my t-mobile sim card contacts from my previous phone, and import them in on the iphone. That was great. It meant at least for the last 3 days that I was able to know who was calling me without having to guess in the dark at the number. Caller ID is a lifeline for me when you need to know if it’s business or pleasure.

There was a problem though… My old sim card only contain 15 character names, and phone numbers. To make matters worse, I had made some custom modifications that allowed me to find types of people easier (For example, I prefixed all my clients with the letters BIZ).

For a lot of people, I also had multiple entries (home and mobile) because i didn’t like using my cell phones multi-phone number system (that and prior to my previous phone, my sim card had been in a nokia, where they didn’t have the multiple number feature).

Hey wow, there’s something worth mentioning… My sim card was an original Voicestream sim card (before t-mobile). The contacts had survived I believe 3 phones (Nokia 3390, Something In Between (didn’t have it long), Samsung E-315). It had been put in various other phones as well (Amber’s various modles for example). And in a computer card. The card has over 5 years worth of contact entries, and for the most part, covered anyone and everyone that ever seemed to call me (including places like Dell, Macys, Fridays, and Petco)

In any case, I made the decision to sync with my Google account, and start updating/properly formatting all of my contacts… At the moment I have roughly 127 contacts to weed through, and about 200 more to make sure get in there (new additions from the wedding invite list). Needless to say, by the time I’m done, by iphone (and Google) will know just about everyone I care to know, and then some (I store numbers I don’t want to answer as well).

All in all, it’s pretty crazy to see how our lives change from the point of view of a contact list… Our addresses, our phone numbers, our last names… These mundane details are at the essence of major changes in our lives. For example:

A good number of people had a last name change to be made in my phone… Why? They got Married.

A good number of people had address changes… Why? They graduated from highschool and went to college OR they graduated from college and moved into someplace else (*or back home*).

A good number of people had email address changes… No significant thing there.

All in all, I’m tempted to have the girl watching our guestbook hold my iphone for the night, and get photos of everyone to make sure my addressbook is as complete as possible… Odds are I wont… but we shall see.

Off to the top secret mission I’m working on (ok so it’s not that topic secret, but it’s dang cool). I’m sure I’ll have more on that later.

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