2005

October 16

Address Book: Mac to Yahoo!

So, I wanted to be able to export my Mac OS X Address Book in some form that would enable me to have access to the information anywhere, anytime (that I could get Internet access, of course) even without my own laptop; for example, at work. (Back in the day, I used a Palm V as my primary source of contact data and synched it to a couple of computers that I used. But I’d rather have the Mac Address Book as the primary source since it has the most utility for my correspondence pattern, not to mention the fact that the Palm V is getting on in age and I can’t even connect it directly to my iBook.) Well, the only export format the Mac Address Book has built-in is vCards—not necessarily bad in principle, but not great in practice, as there aren’t many other applications that use it. After Googling about and trying a few different approaches I settled on an AppleScript that exports from Mac Address Book to a Yahoo! format and then importing that into the Yahoo! Address Book. It feels like appropriate use of technology all around.

posted @ 11:51 AM EDT

October 23

Address Book: Mac to Yahoo! (Modified)

I modified the aforementioned AppleScript that exports Mac Address Book contacts to a file that can be imported by the Yahoo! Address Book. The changed script works differently in the following ways.

  • If there is no home email address then the first address of any kind is used for the primary email address in Yahoo! The alternative Yahoo! email addresses are the first two Mac addresses that are not the primary one.
  • Mac Groups become Distribution Lists in Yahoo! since these two types of data serve the same purpose and have the same relationship to contacts. A contact can be in more than one Mac Group and in more than one Yahoo! Distribution List. One can send email to everyone in a list in either system. All contacts are put into the “Unfiled” Yahoo! Category. (Companies could be separated from people—a project for another time.)

posted @ 07:41 PM EDT

October 29

Yet Another Extension to the Apple Address Book Export Script

This weekend’s change to the Apple Address Book export to Yahoo! CSV AppleScript added more fields to include the Instant Messenger IDs which were appropriately re-mapped.

BTW, Yahoo! is more restrictive about mailing list names than Apple. One could enhance the script to coerce the names but it’s so easy to pick Yahoo! compatible names in the Apple Address Book that why bother?

posted @ 02:56 PM EDT