AddressBookSync

AddressBookSync is a free Mac OS X application to download profile pictures and other Facebook data to Address Book cards. This is a handy tool to keep your contacts' pictures updated if you have numerous Facebook friends in your Mac OS X Address Book.

If your phone supports synchronization with Address Book your contacts' profile pictures show up when they call you. AddressBookSync will also attempt to synchronize birthday (nice for iCal b-day calendar) and current location information to Address Book.

AddressBookSync supports the automatic matching of many common short/alternate first names between Facebook and Address Book (i.e. Michael and Mike, William and Bill, Jessica and Jess). AddressBookSync also supports the manual matching of any Facebook/Address Book pair, as well as the ability to add a new contact to Address Book from Facebook data.

AddressBookSync does not and will not support the synchronization of phone numbers or email addresses as Facebook does not allow this by their Terms of Service.

AddressBookSync version 1.4 updates to use version 0.8.3 of the MKAbeFook framework which fixes some Snow Leopard compatibility issues.

New in version 1.4 release:

• Updated to MKAbeFook v. 0.8.3 which is the latest version of the framework that handles the Facebook login procedures and API calls.
• A new sync option to sync a person's Facebook profile URL to a new URL field in the Address Book card. This should make it really easy to click directly to someone's full profile to manually enter phone number and email information.

New in version 1.3 release:

• Bug fixes for both the manual matching panel and the sync options panel.
• Updated to MKAbeFook v. 0.8.2 which is the latest version of the framework that handles the Facebook login procedures and API calls.
• All available matches are now shown in the matched table, even if there is no data available to actually sync (due to the user's Facebook privacy settings for 3rd party apps).
• Data that is not available to sync from Facebook due to these privacy settings now grayed-out in the Sync Options panel and the checkbox is automatically unchecked.

New in version 1.2 release:

• Manual Matching! There is now a list of "unmatched" Facebook friends which can be associated with an unmatched contact from Address Book.
• The ability to add new contacts to Address Book from the list of unmatched Facebook friends. The new contact card is pre-populated with any available data from Facebook (Name, Photo, Birthday, Location) and then added to a "Facebook" group in Address Book.
• A Sync Options panel now allows you to customize what data (picture, birthday, location) gets synchronized for each matched person. This panel is accessed from the context menu by ctrl- or right- clicking on a selection of people.
• Saving! The specific friends you sync and the data about them that gets synced is now saved automatically and persists each time you run the program. Chances are if you don't want to synchronize a contact the first time, you probably won't want to the next time either. Manually made matches and photo crop/zoom edits are also automatically saved.
• Diacritic-insensitive name matching now ignores accent marks and other special characters which previously prevented automatic name matching for some names.
• The ability to save Facebook login information. No need to authenticate to Facebook each time you run the program.

View Facebook Application About Page

Inspiration for AddressBookSync came from several other photo synchronization Facebook applications I tried out for both Address Book and Outlook to keep my friends' Facebook photos up to date on my iPhone. I was not satisfied with the matching ability, complexity, and cluttered appearance of the other applications so I decided to make my own in some spare time. This is my first Cocoa application and my first time working with the Facebook API. Any comments or feedback are more than welcome!

Features

• Downloads the Facebook profile picture, birthday, and current location into Mac OS X Address Book for any matched contacts.
• Crop/Scale tool to pick the best portion of your friend's picture to use in Address Book.
• Automatically finds matches between your Facebook friends and your Address Book contacts.
• Handles name matching discrepancies for most common short/alternative first names.
• Allows you to manually match any Facebook friends that were not automatically matched to contacts.
• Ability to select which friends you want to be synchronized to the Address Book.
• Ability to customize what data (picture, birthday, location) gets synchronized for each person.
• Sparkle integration for automatic updates to the application.

Screenshots

Future Releases

I hope to continually improve AddressBookSync with new features, while keeping it simple, clean, and lightweight. I would appreciate any kind of feedback, suggestions, bug reports, and feature requests to address in upcoming versions. Some plans I have for the future of AddressBookSync:

• Enhanced matching features for problematic first name matching discrepancies. Please feel free to email me any common short names / nicknames that aren't automatically getting picked up.
• Support for scheduled automatic synchronization of friends' pictures. Right now it's a little bit of a hassle to keep running the program anytime you want to update your contacts' pictures.
• Matching algorithm improvements to speed up the initial matching process.
• Localization, help file, other miscellaneous stuff I didn't get to for the initial release.

Terms and Conditions

• I assume no responsibility or liability for any damages caused by this software. Please back up your Address Book before running the application.
• This software is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
• This software does not transmit any data or private information to me.
• You may not host this software and/or distribute it without prior written permission from me.
• I reserve the right to change these Terms and Conditions with any software update, and you will have to agree to them again in order to continue using the software.

Copyright © 2009 Dan Auclair.  XHTML, CSS.
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback please contact: dan [at] danauclair [dot] com.