Forum Moderators: bakedjake
My latest idea was to maintain the contacts in Thunderbird, and programatically parse the data file on a web server for various uses: through the web, from mobile phone, etc. Only it seems that the data file thunderbird uses is a serious bi*ch to parse, or really do anything with programatically. Many documented attempts can be found on the web, that ended in suicide or homicide. Well not really...
But even the thunderbird contacts list doesn't work with imap, so that list is only available from one computer as far as I know. I guess one option is to have startup scripts that check upload the contacts datafile from a main machine, and download it at startup from other machines. Kindof a pain, and prone to all kinds of annoyances.
Are there any good options for having portable, mobile, maintainable contact info?
Not sure why you are using your own proprietary format. There ARE standards for contact data. vCard, iCalendar, etc.
There's also the hCard microformat, which defines a format for embedding vCard data in a web page (you could use a password-protected page), and an XML vCard format.
It sounds like maybe you want a WebDav or iCal server.
Not sure if anything is currently available for WebDav. It looks like there are several proposals to use WebDav to serve vCards, one called CardDav.
[chandlerproject.org...]
