You can easily share the profile from within the app. Go to the ‘Profile’ tab, then in the top right corner there’s a ‘Sharing button. Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email or SMS to family, friends & colleagues.

Another nifty thing to do is to add it to your email signature. Mine looks like this now.

======

Petter
http://ambadoo.com/petter
[my contact info, always up-to-date]

======

One line of contact info instead of many, and you know it’s always correct :)

I was trying to sort out, update, correct and search for the right phone numbers, emails & birthdays of my friends around the world. It didn’t take long until I got annoyed that I had to do the work myself, one by one. All manually. I could see hours passing by.

Until I scrolled down to my own ‘card’ in the address book which was all up-to-date. It had all contact info anyone would ever need to reach me, my birthday & photo. It was perfectly curated.
So I though, what if we turn it all upside-down? Instead of us, updating everyone else’s stuff we just update our own. And if everyone is doing that too, we all just have one profile – our own, to take care of. A no-brainer.

It sounded easy to me and I couldn’t sleep for days. All I could think about “what if”… What if everyone in the world have all the right contact info to all the people, all the time, without doing anything at all. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

I quit my day job as an architect and decided to go all-in on creating this thing that’d help the world. A big dream, that was very simple in my head but not as simple to conceive.
I’ve been scared many times down the road, that someone would do it faster & better. And in a way that’d be cool, ‘casuse all I really wanted was my address book to be all up-to-date, yet it still isn’t.

With me on the fantastic but rough journey to date I’ve had many by my side, and to those I’m deeply grateful. Mostly I want to thank Rafa and Daniel who’s been there as corner stones and the reasons we’re here today, and Sofia for the endless support.

So, here we are a few trials and errors later and I hope that what we’ve created will bring an end to the contact-info mess of our lives and bring us closer to each other by removing all obstacles. If I can wish for one thing, it’d be that.

petter

The form (of the .open discussion)

The form was pretty open, even though we’d prepared a more detailed session with specific questions and discussion topics, but a general discussion it turned out very well. It was a small group, all together nine people, where everyone knew about ambadoo beforehand and also knew each other. That created a common ground for an open discussion where the questions were listed but just kept flowing and this I see as an ideal situation. A conclusion is that 10 people or less is well suited for this kind of session.

Sending the questions to the group before the session I believe was a good idea. Often workshops like this tend to focus just on the very session and we miss incubation times and mental post reflections. Even before the meeting there was feedback entered to the EtherPad document that was set up.

Using EtherPad gives the possibility to engage bother before and after the session, moreover to take part of the discussion from a distance. Having one person acting as a moderator works very well and makes it possible for everyone to keep track on the discussion.

The character of the attendees, of both knowing each other, social media and mobile application, does of course matter, but was very constructive in this phase of a wider, more conceptual communication. We must however widen the character of the attendee.

The discussion ended up being more focused on communication as a phenomena, the usage of different platforms and social media than about user experience and functionality of an address book. Even that is well motivated and I believe that while the application is develop the sessions will be focusing differently, both of very concrete questions as well as on more abstract and general ones. It was good not to mix the two kinds of discussions.

To discuss more abstractly is also a way to address the more transformative aspects of the service, i.e. not just to do “something a little better” but to discuss in a wider perspective in relation to other services. One could also to focus on more specific questions like integrity and privacy (something which seems very important even though it wasn’t raised in this session)

The content

The discussion went forth and back between the different questions, but here they are categorized:

What contact management system are you using today?

As expected there was a wide variety of address books on the phones and e-mail clients that are synced to different social media like Facebook, linkedin, twitter and yammer and other platforms such as google contacts and hitta.se. Also as expected was how different people focused differently in this flora of systems but common for everyone was the fragmentation, which often is experienced as an issue.

To be able to sync different contact management systems appears to be a very heavy argument for the development of an address book. An implication of that people use different systems is that it’s impossible to know which are relevant, and that it should be possible for one self to configure it.

In the diversity of systems it still seemed that the mobile device is central for everyone. It has a special closeness, since it is the device that you bring with you everywhere. Similarly most attendees expressed that the phone number was the ‘grain of gold’ of the contact information.

In this context, the discussion of the relaxation between private and professional was brought to the table, which is also the characteristics of social media in general. It is definitely a question that are in change and many people don’t have a problem with it, but both views does exist.

A somewhat more special perspective is the one of developing multiple identities beyond private/professional since some people are sitting on many chairs. An implication of this could be the possibility of working with different layers in the address book to bring an enhanced experience.

Some feedback was also regarding how the address book and the calendar does relate and to know what people are up to. So there seems to be a relation between contact management systems and the planning of activities, but also more generally in relation to social media.

As a parenthesis, that wasn’t discussed, I think it’s interesting with situations that connect identity with location (who is where at a given moment) and how that could be implemented without being breaking the privacy.

What’s the worst thing with your current contact management system?

As a consequence of the situation, fragmentation was an issue and most attendees expressed a wish that “everything should be in one place”. The time for input, for example when registering is experienced as substantial. Someone mentioned clouds and the usage of tags but even that does require constant updates to keep accurate.

Another, and a given, regarding updates is how address books after a while lose relevance, in that the information within changes. That is the core idea of ambadoo, and for that idea there seems to be a major support.

But the address book does also lose relevance in another way. As they grow, the contacts that are peripheral and are rarely used, more anonymous. You can’t connect a post in the address book with a real face and person. This points to the possibility with rich media, primarily with photos, in combination of the address book. It’s not a new function, but relatively sparsely used.

An interesting discussion was how the address book is insensitive for context, time and situations. There is for example few possibilities to adjust how you want to be reach in different situations. As in a meeting when you most certainly don’t want to be reached, with an exception of a few. Some expressed also that it was expected to start a conversation with ‘am I interrupting or do you have time to talk?’

A common problem that arose was how the address book also was incomplete. What can be seen as complete is obviously an open question, and it seemed even more important to be able to decide what information was relevant about you. The was everything from ‘I give out all my details’ to decide what to share.

In this context and that of social media one problem is that your forget where you’ve signed up and are active or not. Someone noted that “it’d be interesting to signal on which channel one is most active and responsive”.

How does a dream contact management look like?

As the notes point out above the self-updating (of others contact details), the configurable (of your own contact details) and the synchronization of all the different communication channels are among the most crucial. This is the core of ambadoo and as it seems, there is a wide support for those ideas.

Something relevant to the discussion was the idea of “association”, to be able to check out contacts contacts. Being able to do relationship searches, i.e. searches within your network that you not yet have, seems interesting but is of course a subject of privacy. There was also testimonies of the power to control ones searchable profile.

In addition to that, is also the wish for contextualization and the use of other media. We discussed the thrive to engage in the curation of contact details, and motifs were; being able to be reached, and to have relevant info at hand.

It seems obvious and was also mention that ‘the more you can personalize, the more fun it is’  and ‘being able to build up loyalty towards the system’. Very interesting aspects that we could deep further into.

It seems that discussing nightmare situations also feed the dream scenarios. Therefore I end the notes with these interesting comments from the session.

“I hate the answering machine, but there’s no good alternative”

“Temporary numbers (so one could always reach me, but not own my contact details)”

“Never use Eniro (yellow pages) since it lacks relevance (companies buying themselves a good position)”

“I’m getting nervous when I think about that I only have one number”

“Yammer puts the responsibility in the reader (to decide when you’re a receiver)”

“Being able to call ‘family johnson’ is good since you ‘almost reach the one you’re looking for”

“to curate your different identities is a part of human activity”

At ambadoo we think this is a really good beginning of this form of collaboration and discussion forum. The question is how to continue it and make the discussion even more vivid, irl as well as online. Please come with comments and thoughts, we’re open for all ideas.

In a Google era we expect to be able to search anything, and find the answer in no time. We’ve worked hard to get the right feeling of the contact search. As you start type, the list of contacts filters away the contact that does not match what you write. If there’s no one in your own list of contacts that matches, you can search the global directory. Just give it a try, and please do come with suggestions of how we can make it even better.

Life Stream

Get the latest updates from your contacts. We start of with the twitter flow. A simple thing as a few status updates can make a whole lot of difference when you contact someone. It might make you call instead of email, or text instead of calling, and works well as an ice breaker if you haven’t been in touch for a while.

Speed

It may be one of the most, of not the most important aspects of an address book. Something that you use so often have to be fast. The time it takes from you think ‘I should call him/her’ to the action should be minimal. Everything is now loading with ajax which makes every page load much faster than before.

Favs

We all have some people we contact more than others. As the contact list get longer it’s even more important to have quick access to your favorites. Right at top of the list you have access your favorites so you can easily switch between all contacts and your favs.

Profile

In a try to create a better overview and faster access to the way you want to communicate with a person we compressed the profile, with icons at the top instead of headlines and lots of scrolling. This also makes better place to the very cool life stream :)

The Wizard

Something we’ve wanted for quite some time but never got pushed all the way, a step-by-step introduction, that goes through everything from adding stuff to the profile, finding people on social networks and so on. The essentials. Think this will help to get a better understanding to get started.

Login For Everyone

ambadoo is here for everyone, and while we’ve been pushing for letting people use their existing facebook account to sign up, in the belief that it would be more convenient we now change to old-style email/password to enabling anyone to use ambadoo, facebook user or not. You can then connect to facebook later to easily find friends and more. So welcome everyone onboard. Sign up below.

Other good stuff enhanced.

- html5 input-types, which gives you an adjusted keyboard.
- privacy switch, big and visible.
- icons in the menu, to please that eye.
- account center, for settings and connections.
- maps on addresses + links to google maps, for fast directions.
- add all, when adding friends from networks.
- email notifications when someone adds you. So, that’s what we’ve been up to lately. Go check it out!

Learning from the past, this new version is kept to the bare minimum. It’s probably the most difficult thing to do, refrain from adding features and functions that you’d love to see. Not now. First thing first. So what’s there now is really the core functionality. A profile for yourself to add contact details, and a contact list. And this time around we’ve made it easy to find friends from Facebook, Twitter & Gmail. That’s all. For now.

If you’re waiting for an iPhone app, don’t hold your breath. As we wrote in an earlier post, we’re going web-only for the time being, making it accessible to everyone. The web-app covers most important things we think a user would need: access people’s contact details and being able to contact them.

We’d love to get your feedback, of what’s working and what’s not. We put it out there as is, with the knowledge it’s not perfect but with the hope to get your thoughts on how it can improve. So hit us with whatever you’ve got!  We can take it.

To everyone who’s been following us so far, downloading apps, finding & reporting bugs, given us feedback – we sincerely appreciate your support, your time and your thoughts. Without you, we could not continue to keep doing this.

Thank You So Much. <3

We believe you’ve got many of the answers that we ask ourselves when we develop & design. So instead of guessing > develop > release and realize that we guessed wrong we think a dialogue is a better way to move forward.

On a regular basis we’ll invite a small group to meet, discuss different topics, trying things out and give feedback. Apart from the meetups we have opened forums where anyone can join the discussions, both with topics from the meetups but it could be stuff you think are missing or you wonder about.

We’ve set up a collaborative notepad, a.k.a. etherpad which you can just dive into and take part of. There’s one Swedish and one English version for your preference, and we start of with asking three very straight forward questions:

We haven’t tried this before so we are a little nervous but think it’s really exciting and hope you all join in to the brave new world of open innovation.

We’ve also been reviewing what’s the core of ambadoo: what are we here to do, how will we do that in the best possible way and how will we reach our vision. Much of the original ideas remain but there will be some changes.

The experience has been that the iPhone app, no matter how much we all want it, has caused us such headache and prolonged the release over and over again, we consider leaving that for now. Since we started html5 and the web-standards has improved vastly and we are looking into making solely a webapp to start with.

On the other side (the server side that is) there’s been even more weird things going on, so many weird things we finally did what we ought to do long ago, killed it. The backend was built for development purposes and was never meant for production. And with a crappy backend & API there will never be any good apps at all.

That leaves us with a clean table, which is some of the worst, and  the best thing in the world. The good thing is that you take all experience and knowledge with you, and leave all the messy code behind.

That’s shown to be a pretty damn good thing to do after all. The ‘skeleton’ i.e. all the basic functions is already in place, and is now built on Neo4j, the awesome graph database, and Rails 3 to be prepared for the worst (best).

We’re joined by two awesome guys who’s coding poetry: Andreas Ronge & Daniel Krusenstråhle, both with a rigorous background within web dev. and we’re very excited to have them onboard. We now believe we can finally execute the vision of a completely hassle-free & self-updating contact system for all of you. More to come.

The background of the sudden silence from us after the release for the past few weeks is that not much has actually happened on either the app, or the development in general.

We’re in the middle of a thought process of whom to carry on with the project. There so many thoughts right now but nothing that’s easy to write about. They might better fit in a book of how to do, or rather not to do a startup.

So, things are happening – just not so much talkable things right now. We do work on things, and we will be back live, in one way or another.

We’re very sorry and disappointed about having to do this, but what we care most about is you, and helping you make contact management easier. If the app doesn’t do that, it shouldn’t be there. To those of you who’ve downloaded already, you are fine. The bugs are not related to the contacts itself but the search, sharing & profile.

We really cut down the features and functionality to the bare minimum, but we cut too hard on this release making the app hard to understand. It was not our intention, but we’re pushing hard to a release for the Sweden Social Web Camp that was a perfect platform to demo it the first time. Now, we weren’t able to demo it there since the app was hanging out in the App Store waiting to get approved.

Our main fear with the App Store approval process was the risk of not being let through due to duplication of functionality, but since the approval yesterday we now know that’s not the case – for now.

All development is on hold at the moment until further notice due to an uncertain state of our relationship with the tech-partner. We keep fighting & hope you understand the situation.

Sincerely, Petter

The misfits.
The nerds.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They are not fond of rules,
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glory or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can
change the world, are the ones who do.

Think differently.

Source: Wikipedia