I was popping a few new contacts into my Mac Address Book and while doing so I discovered a few new handy features that I hadn’t used before.
Synchronize with Google
Click on Address Book in your top menu bar then Preferences then go to the Accounts tab and check the box that says “Synchronize with Google”. Enter your Gmail account information and all the information from your Mac Address Book is automatically imported (and synchronized so it’s always up to date) to your Gmail contacts list. Since I do all of my emailing in Gmail, everyone’s email address is now ready to go.
I was a little worried this might make a giant mess of my Address Book when it imported my Gmail contacts back but it wasn’t too bad. I did have to do a little clean up but Look for Duplicates and Merge Selected Cards options in the Card menu made that quick and easy.
Smart Groups
The contacts I was entering into Address Book on this go were all people I met at a recent event. In the notes section, I typed the name of the event and the year so that later when I wonder where I met them I have a reminder. Now, I could drag and drop them each into a manual group but since I already had the note in place a smart group was quicker and easier. Go to File > New Smart Group and select your criteria like you would when setting up a Smart Playlist in iTunes and you’ve got a quick and easy group.
Apple could still make a lot of improvements to Smart Groups. Since my iPhone is my only phone, it tracks all of my calls. I’d love for that data to be imported back to Address Book so I could create Smart Groups based on the statistics of who I call the most, talk with the longest, or when I last called them. By layering Groups and Smart Groups you could narrow down, for example, relatives you haven’t talked to in at least 3 months and then you’d easily be able to see a list of who you needed to call and catch up with. The options could also be a little smarter: rather than what their city or zip is or is not, I’d like to be able to make a “local” group of all my contacts within a certain distance of my home.
Shared in Works for me Wednesday.
I’ll be posting my insights and tips related to the new iTunes 9 and iPhone 3.1 releases after I’ve had time to properly digest them.
In the meantime, here’s what I wanted but didn’t get today and will continue wishing for in future Apple releases:
- Smart Contact Lists – These would be like smart playlists but be a way to sort and organize your contacts based on any of the information you enter for them in your address book and based on call data like how recently you spoke with them or how often you’ve called them.
- iTunes Support for Multiple Hard Drives – I’d love to store my music on my internal hard drive and my TV shows on an external hard drive and have everything always sync nicely and iTunes and my Apple TV not freak out if the external hard drive isn’t available.
- Genius for TV Shows and Movies – I’d love if iTunes could give me recommendations for additional media to watch based on what I already own or have rented. Maybe I could even rate things I watched outside of iTunes to improve those recommendations. (Update: Would you look at that, they didn’t announce it but if you click the “Genius Recommendations” link in the iTunes store you do get TV show and movie recommendations and you can rate things without having bought them via the iTunes store.)
- Apple TV Firmware Update – Apple TVs can’t remember wireless network passwords so if the network drops for any reason you have to enter it again. It’s been a known issue for years now so why hasn’t it been fixed yet?
What features are on your wishlist?
While discussing our computer uses the other day, my brother said, “You can learn a lot about somebody by looking at what’s in their dock.”
Let’s take a look at mine:
My interests span media, the internet, graphic design, and gaming (strictly when those games are well designed with the Mac in mind) and that is clearly reflected in my dock.
I’m currently running Snow Leopard and I make good use of several of the programs that come on all Macs:
- iTunes
- iCal
- Address Book
- iChat
- Text Edit
- iPhoto
I also frequently use some free software including:
- Firefox
- TweetDeck
- Amazon MP3 Downloader
My software picks in terms of what I needed to buy to are:
- Microsoft Office
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator (I’m still using Adobe CS2 since that’s what I bought with the educational discount while in college and haven’t needed to upgrade badly enough to pay full price yet)
- World of Warcraft (geeky as it is, this is the best designed game for Mac)
- Spore
- The Sims 3
- Turbo Tax (this doesn’t actually make it into the dock since I only need it for a few days each tax season but I buy it every year)
So tell me, what’s in your dock?
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