The Daydream Blog

Getting the template database off to a start, I have added templates for the contacts lists from all the major Mail clients. Layout Templates for Apple’s Address Book and the Contacts for Entourage, Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook for Windows, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail can all be found in the new Address Book category of the template database.

Instructions for how to export contact information from each of these systems can be found by in the detail of each template in the online database.

Apple Address Book

Apple’s Address Book cannot currently export directly to a flat file format that Differencia can import. However Address Book can export to the standard vCard format with files with extension .vcf. There is an excellent utility on the web that will convert vCard files from any source into flat file formats that Differencia can handle. The Address Book templates in the database are based on the output from this vCard Format Converter.

The VCF Converter is quick and reliable and none of your private contact information is ever stored or available to the website running the converter. The converter can be found here.

NB. You will need Differencia 1.0.3 or later to make use of these templates.

Future Directions

Comparing Contact information provides some fascinating challenges for a comparison and reconciliation tool such as Differencia. In the future I hope to add some intelligence to Differencia with regard to contact data so that it can:

• Make a probable match between “Mr J Smith” and “John Smith”
• Understand international & area codes, so that a Home Phone of “+1-408-555-1234″ is the same as a Home Phone of “5551234″ for someone with a Home Address in Cupertino, CA, USA.
• Add support for direct access to Apple’s Address Book, without need for conversion
• Direct support for vCard (vcf) and LDIF files

We would appreciate any further feedback on how we can improve Differencia, so feel free to contact us.