I’m not typically one that likes to replace Apple’s core iOS apps with third-party alternatives, but Savvy Apps’ latest iPhone app, Buzz, allows me to access my contacts faster than Apple’s own Phone software, and I had to leave a spot for it in my Dock.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been testing Buzz, the latest production by iOS design and development firm Savvy Apps by Ken Yarmosh. Similarly to Agenda, also by Savvy Apps, Buzz comes with its own clean, custom UI focused on presenting text against a light background that contributes to increasing readability and finding things in seconds. Whilst I believe Agenda benefits more from this design aesthetic because of how it handles information density (a calendar app can get pretty busy), the same focus on clarity and simplicity works equally well for Buzz, which is a quick dialer/contact management app that emulates many of Apple’s Phone functionalities in a completely new interface.

Think of Buzz as a minimalist take on Apple’s Phone app, aimed at enhancing a few important functionalities, leaving out many others that are (at least in my workflow) rarely used. Whilst Phone.app obviously offers control over recently missed phone calls, the voicemail, and your system favorites, Buzz takes the “quick shortcut” aspect of apps like Launch Center and Matt Gemmell’s Favorites, combines it with group management and native integration with the Address Book, and comes up with a rather unique implementation that allows for a very lightweight usage, or deeper full-blown contact interaction. I believe many out there will find it hard to completely give up on the native Phone app — especially for the Recents view — but I found Buzz to be enough for me and, if anything, a better solution for my daily Address Book needs. (more…)

For anyone who used Windows Vista, you will be well aware of the frustration that UAC (User Account Control) caused. That permission dialog popped up far too frequently, constantly asking the user for permission to execute a particular task. In theory, it was a good idea: give the user more control over what was allowed to run. The problem was that because the dialog box popped up far too often, people quickly learned to ignore it and blindly click “Allow” whenever it appeared - nullifying any of the security benefits of UAC. Thankfully Microsoft relaxed the pervasiveness of UAC in Windows 7 and it is now a far more useful security tool.

Why did I just spend a paragraph talking about UAC? Because to a certain degree, Apple is facing a similar dilemma with iOS and its permission dialogs. It recently faced scrutiny after it was revealed that a number of apps were accessing a user’s entire address book and even uploading it to their servers – without any user approval. Apple has now pushed back and announced it will soon require user permission for apps to access a user’s Contacts. But will it resemble yet another blue dialog box, just like access to Location, Push Notifications and Twitter already do? If so a user will face a barrage of those dialog boxes, asking for permission, one on top of the other.

It’s after reading Marco Arment’s thoughts on this issue earlier today that I thought I would weigh into the discussion and suggest one idea that may (or may not) be a potential ‘solution’. While there can never be a single solution that will be perfect for everyone (what may be overly cautious for one user may be overly lenient for another) the goal as I see it is to arrive at a solution somewhere in the middle ground; one that achieves an acceptable mix of precaution and freedom.

Essentially, my suggestion is that rather than let users face a stacked barrage of blue permission dialogs, is to flatten them all out on one clear screen when they first launch an app after installation. Users would see a list of what the app would like permission to access and the user would be able to (with one tap) allow all, or individually deny permission for the various databases. Furthermore, with one tap, a user could see a short justification from the developer for why the app is requesting that particular access – giving a little bit more control and peace of mind to the user. If a developer lied on this page it would almost certainly be grounds for expulsion from the App Store. The one final goal of my proposal is that it would also inform the user that these options can be changed the Settings, something many users may not be aware of at the moment.

I myself am not sure this is the best option, because there is one critical weakness. With my design, an app would have to upfront ask for permissions for whatever it might want to access in the future – but as Marco points out, some apps (like Instapaper) require access to something like Location for a minor feature that not everyone would even use (in that case it is to determine if it’s night at the users location, in which case it can switch automatically to dark mode).

If I asked most careful people if Instapaper could have their location, they’d refuse, because there’s no obvious good reason. But if the app asks right when they enable a location-based setting from a screen that shows why it’s asking for their location, they can make a more educated decision. Similarly, if an app doesn’t seem to have a good reason when it asks for Contacts, a skeptical person can decline.

Although to counter that point, I would note that not only can a user choose to individually deny Instapaper access to their location, but if they were curious as to why Instapaper would need access to their location, they could quickly read Marco’s explanation with one tap. Furthermore, my suggestion wouldn’t entirely remove the blue permissions dialog, as an app could ask again for permission later on if access was initially denied but a user is trying to use a feature that requires permission — in that case, the app could trigger the dialog to ask the user permission again.

Accompanying my suggestion would be something similar to Rene Ritchie’s app permission sheet in Settings. It would list all apps that have asked for permissions and you could dive in and edit those original options from when you first installed the app. As for allowing an app to send push notifications, I would probably keep that separate, as its own blue dialog box. My permissions “screen” would be solely dedicated to access permissions, to information that is privately stored on your device. One big benefit of such a permissions screen of course is that Apple could theoretically add more things that require permission to be accessed by apps, without a user becoming too overwhelmed, because such a layout is far better than stacking dialog boxes. Think about access to NFC or perhaps your music library.

Sometime in the past five years, the Address Book got social. Our contact cards suddenly gained Twitter handles and Facebook links, whilst users more oriented towards business relationships decided to add their LinkedIn pages alongside standard phone numbers and email addresses. More importantly, the Address Book became mobile: adding a new entry to the Contacts app on our iPhones pretty much equals to exchanging business cards now and, unsurprisingly, a new category of apps has arisen from the need of turning old cards into digital reinterpretations of that paper stack full of contacts we’d keep on our desk, but never properly organize.

From this premise, Xobni (that’s Inbox spelled backwards), makers of a popular email plugin for Outlook and Gmail, released Smartr for iPhone a few weeks ago on the App Store. Developed as a mobile companion to Xobni on the desktop, Smartr leverages all the features made possible by a digital interface (search, social integration, slick design, APIs) to provide you with a social address book that’s always up to date and keeps tracks of your communication with friends, family, and work contacts over time. It is very smart indeed.

Smartr basically creates rich profiles for all your contacts, aggregating data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and email to form a complete overview of someone you might have communicated with in the past. In pulling this data from various social networks, Smartr uses its proprietary matching technology (the “Xobni Cloud”) to analyze and compare your contacts (from your Address Book, an interesting subject following Path’s recent PR fiasco) against conversation history from email (Gmail is fully supported), usernames from Twitter and Facebook, status updates, and so forth. Once a contact is matched, a rich profile view is created featuring name, photo, phone number, and email addresses. Smartr even allows you to swipe across the top section of a profile view to switch between a person’s various social profiles, which upon tap will correctly launch the official Twitter and Facebook apps (if installed).

But what to do with these rich, automatic and integrated profiles? Well, Smartr is largely focused on search, unlike, say, a tool like Friends that’s more geared towards interacting with people from your Address Book found on other social networks. Smartr’s prominent interface element is, in fact, a search box that lets you look up contacts by name, company, title, or email. I wish the app supported @username-based look-ups, as I might remember exchanging a message or two with @hrbrt, but I can’t recall his full name from further email communications. Smartr is fast: Searching more than 6,000 contacts on my iPhone takes seconds and the information is always up to date, as Smartr is also web-based in that Xobni’s servers are constantly analyzing and matching your contacts to provide the best results. You can read more about Xobni’s privacy policy here.

Once you’ve found a contact (I managed to retrieve contact information and conversation history from messages dating back to 2008), you can interact with the profile view to compose new emails, call a phone number, or send a new message. The History tab in the top toolbar will give you access to a nicely designed graph showing how many times you’ve appeared in a conversation with a contact, with the actual messages listed below and available for inline viewing if the associated email address is also configured in Smartr (the app will use the standard iOS mail view to enable this). The third tab, Common, shows a list of common contacts between you and the contact you previously looked up.

Smartr is very fast, reliably accurate, and has proven to be a nice addition to my workflow, especially for those times I want to look up an old contact (typically developers) that I want to get in touch with again. I wouldn’t mind paying for Smartr, but the app is free, and available on the App Store. If mail integration is your thing, make sure to check out Xobni’s popular Gmail plugin as well.

While Twitter integration is engrained in iOS 5 (heck, Apple even lets you know whether you have Twitter’s official app installed or not), All Things D reports that Contacts has received a small update which includes support for adding friend’s handles on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Flickr. When you add a contact to your iPhone, you can link that person to all of their social accounts. If you tap the handle in your contacts list, you’ll be take to that person’s user profile page.

The inclusion of the feature shows Apple’s acknowledgement of the importance of Web presences and contact information. But it could be much more useful if users don’t have to enter each of their friends’ handles manually, as appears to be the case at least in this release.

There’s also an inactive “add custom service” button that may allow you to add someone’s Instagram or MLKSHK account in the future – currently I found this particular feature wasn’t working. To access these additional profiles, edit a contact, and add a Profile field. If tap on the word Profile, you can select between the various social networks.

[via All Things D]

When it comes to syncing contacts back and forth between the cloud and my iPhone, it all gets kind of boring. I don’t keep many contacts stored on my Address Book (less than 150), and the ones I keep are usually organized in three groups: Friends, Favorites, and MacStories. Everything else falls into Uncategorized, meaning it’s not been assigned to any group because I don’t need to — e.g. these are people I don’t get in touch with much often, so I don’t see why I should bother finding a group for them. My contacts — especially the work-related ones — usually come with both phone numbers and email addresses; contacts and groups all sync to Google’s servers or MobileMe on my iPhone, iPad and two Macs. Like I said, pretty common stuff for an Apple user nowadays.

FlickAddress, a new iPhone app from the creators of Sleipnir and Inkiness, wants to spice things up a little bit by bringing gestures and better grouping features into the mix, allowing users to easily flick through groups as “cards” and collect contacts with drag&drop and tap actions. FlickAddress plugs directly into your existing (local, perhaps synced) iOS Address Book so you’ll be ready to use the app right after launch. All your contacts and groups are there, alongside phone numbers, addresses and information you assigned to each contact. As the name suggests, in FlickAddress you flick: a swipe left lets you move to the second group in your list, a few more swipes and you’ll eventually get to the Uncategorized list like in my Address Book. If you don’t want to swipe to move between groups, an icon in the top toolbar enables you to access them from a classic list view.

The big feature of FlickAddress is that contacts can be moved around or assigned to a new group with a drag&drop gesture: if you tap & hold a contact, a tiny card icon will pop up on screen telling you that you’re about to move a contact; tap on another person’s name while you’re dragging and another card will be added to the popup. You can do this to move multiple people into a different group, or assign them to a new one heading over the + button in the bottom section. What if you want to contact these people instead of changing their groups, though? FlickAddress has got you covered here, too. If you’re in a group and you want to mass-email or text everyone in there, you just have to hit the mail icon, choose Mail or SMS and tap on Create. With email messages, you can choose between To, Cc and Bcc. Of course, the app also lets you call, email, text or FaceTime someone from the single contact view as that’s basically based on the standard iOS Address Book and replicates most of its functionalities. In addition, FlickAddress can bookmark specific information (like an email address or phone number) and save bookmarks into a separate section.

FlickAddress may not be as fast as Dialvetica when it comes to quickly calling or texting someone, but I think it’s because this product is meant for “address book power users” in the first place — iPhone owners who’d like to do stuff like mass emailing people and group management in an alternative interface as the one offered by FlickAddress. At $1.99 in the App Store, give it a try. (more…)

As you might have read if you follow me on Twitter, my MobileMe subscription expired last week. In the past year, I’ve relied on MobileMe’s services (but not the webapp) for syncing all my contacts, calendars, emails and bookmarks from the desktop to the cloud and back to iOS devices such as my iPhone 4 and iPad. But when the subscription was nearing its expiration date (Apple notifies you weeks before with a series of emails and a brief note on Me.com), I was left with a question: should I renew? Considering all the rumors about MobileMe being completely revamped and going free we’ve heard in the past months, I was skeptical about a renewal because I didn’t want to pay for a service that is likely going through some major changes and won’t no longer be supported (at least in its current iteration) a year from now. And even if I still have access to some sections of my old MobileMe account (mail, contacts and Find My iPhone), I decided that renewing wasn’t simply worth it and it was time for me to find an alternative — even a temporary one until MobileMe is updated to include new features and pricing schemes. That alternative is Google Sync, and here’s my experience so far. (more…)

As noted by TiPB, Verizon has released a first version of its Contact Transfer app in the App Store. The free iPhone app, which only works with Verizon iPhones and won’t do anything on your AT&T device, can import contacts from your previous Verizon phone using the external Backup Assistant service.

This application is only for Verizon wireless users. Download the free application to transfer your contacts from your Backup Assistant device to your new device. All your contacts will be transferred to your new device with in minutes.

Backup Assistant is the service Verizon uses to let customers save their contacts in the cloud and easily restore them on any device. The iPhone version will behave just like you’d expect from a Verizon handsets, although I guess for Mac users it should be simpler to just sync their Address Book using iTunes. Or, if you’re a MobileMe subscriber, activate contact syncing over the air. Still, if you happen to have an old Verizon phone and you never backed up your contacts to the desktop, this app might help during the process.

In these past months on MacStories, we have covered two apps that aim at becoming replacements for the standard Apple Phone app: Favorites and Dialvetica. By leveraging the APIs of iOS that allow for 3rd party apps to access your contact’s list, these apps are focused on letting you quickly access your favorite contacts and either call them, text them or email them with a few taps. Favorites and Dialvetica are not really focused on the number dialing part of the phone experience (although the latest Dialvetica update introduced a dialpad), they’re rather simple interfaces to get to your most contacted friends and do stuff. Shortcuts, that is.

QuickBins, a free iPhone app by Chalk, is very similar to Favorites, but it’s based on drag & drop. The app displays your favorite contacts (which you’ll have to add manually) as profile pictures on a grid, and you can even create multiple pages of contacts. As you fire up the app, you’ll notice 4 big buttons at each corner: those are shortcuts to initiate a call, send a text message, an email and check on a contact’s address. How do you activate these commands? Simple: you take a contact, and you drop it on a button. QuickBins will then forward you to an external app (third-party software can’t send calls or text without loading Apple’s stock apps) to perform the action.

That’s it. QuickBins will soon introduce support for Skype, Twitter and Google Voice, it’s free and ad-supported, but you can remove the ads with a $2.99 in-app purchase. QuickBins also happens to have a beautiful UI design that makes it a real pleasure to tap on its icon and look at the dashboard.

QuickBins is available for free here.

Developed by Spanning Sync and available in the Mac App Store at $4.99, Contacts Cleaner is a simple utility aimed at fixing the little problems that can slowly take over your state-of-the-art Address Book organization. I’m talking about unrecognized Unicode characters (because admit it, you tried to paste weird symbols next to your boss’ phone number), missing info and extra spaces between names that shouldn’t be there. Contacts Cleaner can fix these issues thanks to a minimal and simple interface that makes it easy to go through the most scary list of broken contacts. (more…)