Android: Some apps grab you by surprise and leave you saying, "Where has this been all my life?" Drupe is one of those apps for me. With one swipe, you can choose which app you'd like to use to talk with a contact right now.

iPhone: Living in a connected world, you probably have friends, family and coworkers in different timezones. Veern lets you add them into a custom contact list that displays the current time at their location, and then gives you ways to get in touch with them.

Chrome: You may often visit a company website simply to find their contact information. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just click a button, get it and send it to your phone? Sendola does just that.

If your boss happens to share a name with a friend or co-worker, there's always a chance of accidentally selecting the wrong person with your email client's autofill feature. Macworld suggests assigning nicknames to those people who share names in your address book.

Share Contacts is a free app that gives Android users an easy way to send and receive contacts via SMS with others (even if they don't have an Android device).

Mac OS X only: Free application AddressBookSync pulls contact photos and birthdays from your Facebook account and syncs them with Address Book, so you'll always nice photos assigned to your contacts (and hopefully never miss another birthday). Once upon a time we covered a very cool app called FacebookSync that could sync all of your Facebook friends' profile info—including address and phone number—into your Address Book. The folks at Facebook killed that app for violating their Terms of Service, but apparently AddressBookSync's limited photo-and-birthday information pull is within the bounds of acceptable use. Since nearly everyone you know is on Facebook these days, AddressBookSync's photo synchronisation alone is a fun and worthwhile feature.I was looking at an iPhone app earlier today called Photo Phonebook (iTunes link) that offers another seemingly smooth solution to this problem (it syncs Facebook profile pics with your iPhone contacts), but unfortunately it requires way more hoop jumping than it's worth. AddressBookSync on the other hand is a simple, free download, Mac OS X only. Got your own, perhaps better method of getting pics assigned to your contacts? Let's hear it in the comments.

AddressBookSync

Mac OS X only: Free preference pane application Fruux syncs Address Book, iCal, and tasks between different Macs. To use it, just install the preference pane and create a new account with Fruux. Once you've verified your account, go ahead and run your first synchronisation. Fruux uploads your contact and calendar information to the cloud so it's ready to sync to any of your other Macs. Just wash, rinse, and repeat with as many computers as you want to sync with. Fruux is smart, too, supporting sync conflict resolution when a record has been changed on both computers. You can already roll your own contact syncing with Address Book and Google Contacts or push contacts, and Google Calendar syncs with iCal without too much effort, but if you'd prefer a more streamlined alternative, Fruux provides a dead simple install-it-and-forget-it syncing setup.

Even better, the Fruux roadmap reveals more ambitious goals, including Safari bookmark syncing and—more importantly—preferences syncing. Essentially, then, Fruux is aiming toward building a homegrown MobileMe. If this app remains free, it's got crazy potential written all over it. Fruux is a free download, Mac OS X only.

Fruux

One of the new apps slated for release during this Friday's iPhone 2.0 launch is Friend Book, a "super Address Book" that promises to make dealing with your iPhone contacts much easier and fun. Made by Tapulous, a new company dedicated to iPhone/iPod touch apps, Joel Johnson at Boing Boing describes Friend Book's "holy crap" feature: The coolest feature without a doubt is the new "Handshake": put two iPhones running Friend Book together, shake them up and down, and the personal contact information of the phones' owners will be beamed through the net to the paired phones. Handshake doesn't work through a device-to-device connection, but instead passes location data back to Tapulous' servers — two shaking phones in the same location means it's time to swap information. Friend Book, along with the company's other two apps, Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle will be free to download from Apple's new App Store on Friday. Hit the play button to see Friend Book in action. Tapulous shows iPhone Apps: Friend Book, Tap Tap Revenge, and Twinkle

Mac OS X only: Earlier today we reported that Mac OS's latest update to 10.5.3 included Google contact syncing to Address Book—if you've connected an iPhone or iPod touch to your Mac, that is. If you don't have an iPhone or iPod touch and unlocking this useful bit of functionality isn't worth paying hundreds of dollars for the device, a simple system tweak can turn it on for you.

Mac OS X Leopard only: Today's release of Mac OS 10.5.3 added a juicy little tidbit to Address Book: the ability to automatically sync your Google contacts. After you've run Software Update and gotten 10.5.3 (and restarted your Mac), hit up Address Book's Preferences pane. At the button of the General tab, check off the "Synchronize with Google" box to get started. Be sure to back up your address book before you sync, and see the FAQ for more info. Update: Several commenters rightly point out that this capability only exists for iPhone owners, which is quite possibly a crappier move than forcing Safari onto Windows users on Apple's part. Time to switch to Linux.

Mac OS X only: Free, open source application AdiumBook acts as a bridge between your Adium IM contacts and your Address Book contacts to help you manage and keep all of your contacts in sync. You can add Adium contacts to Address book or update a contact's entry with Adium's information, as well as search across your Adium and Address Book contacts from one simple interface. If your contact data is spread across your traditional address book and IM contacts, AdiumBook might be just the tool to bring them together. AdiumBook is free, Mac OS X only. AdiumBook

We've got IMAP for email, iCal and other syncing options for calendars, but what about our address books? Most likely you use a combination of proprietary services like Facebook and other social networks, desktop address books, cell phone and webmail contact lists to keep track of who's who in your life, but there's still no easy way to maintain and sync your digital Rolodex wherever you need it.

One of the best features of keeping a TiddlyWiki with you on any system—such as a GTD TiddlyWiki—is the ability to throw into it anything you come across, whether it's a task to do or a note about dinner. Now you can add organised, easily-imported contacts to that list through twab, a macro that plugs into any Tiddly-type page and can take in contacts from Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and MSN, as well as any others that export into Comma-Separated Value (CSV) format. The tabbed address book comes in a plain gray/dark-gray scheme, but changing those colours—and many more things about twab—is explained at the link below. twab - the tiddly wiki address book

Bloove is an online mobile phone management application which supports newer Nokia and Sony Ericsson Symbian and J2ME phones (full list here). The app lets you use your web browser to edit address book contacts, speed dial settings, messages and logs - and even send SMS and initiate calls. It's aiming to be simpler to use than the management software which comes with your phone, and at first glance it seems to be working.Once the Bloove app is installed on your phone, you can manage it from the web (no application required on the desktop). The signup process is very easy. Navigate to www.bloove.com/m on your phone and download the Bloove application. Now use your desktop computer to sign up for an account at Bloove. It will ask you from the ID from your phone - you just need to open the Bloove app to get the number, type it into the form and you're signed up. Your phone will automatically synch and you'll see your contacts and SMSs appear on the Bloove the web page on your desktop.Unfortunately, one big drawback of Bloove seems to be the ridiculously small allowance of only allowing you to archive 15 contacts with the free plan. Most people would have many more contacts than that. They will be adding a paid service which has a higher number of contacts allowed, but I think that the limit of 15 is just too low for the free service to be useful.They allow an archive of 100 SMS messages, which is better, but I suspect that most people would be more keen to backup their contacts than their SMS archive.The SMS management looks pretty fully featured. It automatically backs up your Inbox, Sent and all other folders. They are searchable across folders and you can archive any messages and folders using the web interface -
archived items will be deleted on the phone and will be kept on the
server. There is also an option to delete messages permanently from both the phone and the Bloove archive.In addition, a small blue balloon is displayed near a contact name if there is message
or calls history for it. Clicking on this balloon will show the history.The other major limit on the free account is that you can only have one phone associated with your Bloove account. Otherwise it would be a great tool for migrating your contacts from one phone to another when you upgrade. Again, this is a feature they've promised for the paid service. After the jump, you can read 5 tips from the Bloovers on cool things you can do with Bloove.

Weblog TUAW details how to take advantage of your Mac's built-in automation tool, Automator, to send out birthday greetings on the day-of to everyone in your Address Book. Using the Birthday field in Address Book, putting together automated birthday emails is just a two-step process in Automator. Naturally, you shouldn't rely on this method as your only means of remembering and recognising birthdays, but it's a nice way to send simple notes and get a birthday conversation started, especially with people you aren't in touch with that often. While you're at it, you may also want to import Address Book birthdays into iCal. Mac Automation: Birthday greetings

The Marc and Angel productivity blog drums up 10 useful mobile phone numbers to keep in your contacts list—the kind of numbers you don't use often, but you really want to get at fast when you do. Among them, they make a strong argument to do a little research ahead of time and find a reputable, affordable, and, most importantly, available locksmith:There's nothing worst than being locked out, especially at night. Save yourself the hassle of trying to find a reputable locksmith with reasonable prices when you are locked out and stressed out. Do a little homework now and find yourself a reputable locksmith that has a 24 hour emergency call service.Sound advice, and quick to accomplish with a Google Maps or online yellow page service. What must-have numbers are firmly lodged in your phone's address book? Serve up a few ideas in the comments. 10 Handy Numbers to Save in Your Mobile Phone

If you send email to the same handful of people often—like your softball team or foodie friends—create your own personal mailing list in Gmail using Contact groups. In Gmail, click on the Contacts area to name a new group. From there, you can add people to the group, or from any individual contact, click on the "Add to Group" button. When you're composing a message, in the To: field, enter the name of your group to save yourself from typing out the list by hand. Looks like this feature is available in both the old and new versions of Gmail, so whatever you're using, it seems like the best way to send frequent mailings to the same handful of your peeps in one shot.Create personal mailing lists through contact manager

All platforms running Thunderbird: The addressContext Thunderbird extension batch processes to and from email addresses for a set of messages from the context menu. Quickly create a new mailing list, or simply add new cards to your address book by selecting a set of messages, right-clicking and choosing "Add Senders/Recipients as Cards" or "Add Senders/Recipients as List." The addressContext extension is a free download, and works with and wherever Thunderbird does.

addressContext

Microsoft Outlook 2007 offers one-click access to a map of your contact's location. Fill in a contact address and click the "Map this" button on the contact tab to launch MSN Maps in your default browser, where you can get directions to and from the location. The question is, how do you change the map service to something other than MSN? First person to post how in the comments gets a cookie.

Get Maps and Directions to Your Contacts in Outlook 2007