Plaxo has started a free 30 day trial of their premium service. Due to the fact I am leaving my current employer of almost 10 years I wanted to perform a good cleanup and update of my contacts. I don't have an enormous amount of contacts, a few hundred, but the are all extremely valuable to me. I wanted to ensure they new of my pending changes, received my up-to-date information, and ensure that I had their current information.
Reading online, as I do way too often, I encountered numerous references to Plaxo. After further research I decided to try it out. Upon initial installation of their software I was greatly surprised how many of my contacts immediately "connected"--the term used when someone on my contact list is also a Plaxo member. These included people at Apple, Microsoft, etc. This means that when ever I update my contact information theirs will automatically be updated through the Plaxo service and vice-a-versa.
The second step was to send update requests, using the provided Web, Thunderbird and Outlook interface, to a large group of selected key contacts. I was provided with a number of customizable email templates which was then sent from me with my attached and up-to-date personal contact information. The email contained a link to their contact information I had on file with Plaxo and allowed them to update their information and join Plaxo if desired. I was quite astonished at how quickly people provided updates and thus automatically updating my address books.
I am currently syncing this information between Outlook on my office PC, Outlook and
Thunderbird, my preferred email client, on my home PC, Thunderbird on my Mac and then to my BlackBerry--more on the new BB soon. I have also done a vCard export for import into my Mac OS X Address Book app. Though there is not full Mac OS X support rumor sites are reporting this
should be available in January. The syncing has worked well and I now have my contacts effectively managed and updating across multiple devices and platforms with minimal efforts.
I would suggest checking it out! I just joined the 30 day Plaxo Premium trial and will let everyone know what I think once I have a chance to further explore.
