Ilia's dashboard

Ilia marked one of Tiago Macedo's replies in Soocial as useful. Tiago Macedo replied to the idea "Implement timezone when showing user's local time in webapp.".

Ilia replied on September 25, 2009 09:07 to the idea "Implement timezone when showing user's local time in webapp." in Soocial:

Yay! It works! I love those tiny little things that make life easier.

Ilia started following the question "Is there support for syncing between multiple gmail accounts?" in Soocial.

Ilia asked a question in Mozilla Messaging on August 16, 2009 04:31:

Have you ever considered extensible addressbook format?

Is there any opportunity to change Thunderbird Address book fromat from "Outlook"-like to more flexible one? How can people nowadays imagine that a person cannot have more than 2 email adressed and 1 (one!) mobile phone? What should I do, if I have a contact, say, with 3 emails and 3 mobile phones? Just in case, consider Apple Addressbok and Soocial.com. They support unlimited number of fields per contact, and right they are.

A comment on the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

Sorry, Bart.
I did sent, but did it to noreply (didn't notice at all)
Now fixed it and you should get it right.
Sent it as "my response to you #1"
Why #1 ? Because now I'm wighting #2. Rather interesting one. – Ilia, on August 12, 2009 12:35

Ilia replied on August 11, 2009 19:25 to the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

OK. Sent you my response ;)

Ilia started following the idea "Overview with all changes after last backup" in Soocial.

A comment on the question "How do you plan to support matching of fields that Outlook has no room for?" in Soocial:

The trick is to treat field values as self descriptive.
Once being created, we can always remember its original "position" (i.e. label).
Then, if we will track the values themselves, we will understand what happens
to these values much better.
Even if the user will change its label (i.e. "move" it) - we should treat its new
label explicitly and change it in soocial accordingly, without any regards to our field-mapping.
Something like this. Maybe I wil need some fancy diagram to clarify myself. – Ilia, on August 08, 2009 20:14

A comment on the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

As an update: now I've noticed, that this group loss propagated to soocial too :(( – Ilia, on August 07, 2009 12:33

Ilia replied on August 07, 2009 12:15 to the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

mac <--> soocial sync - the story continues.
Before syncing to soocial, I've made some updates.
I've added a couple of friends and modified one coworker entry. At soocial side I've added third friend too. Then deleted the mac account from soocial to make him forget and to start from scratch, although before these updates, all data in my mac was equal to that in soocial.
Now then I've activated your app in my mac and started syncing.
Immediately I noticed, that one business entry was doubled in my mac. First one was good, but second one again had problem with wrighting company name into "first name"+"last name". I've deleted it, and again, it took me some time and a number of syncs to convince soocial that is ok for an entry NOT to have first and last name. (I REALLY think you should fix this just by remembering in soocial which contact is really a company - as it is done in mac).
All in all was good - those new contacts synced and appeared both in mac and soocial.
And then I've opened my gmail...
It also was in synced state now. But it apparently lost all those groups which were involved, namely: Friends and Coworkers. Right now I have in thse groups only those contacts, which were explicitly modified in this experiment.
I really don't want to start syncing with gmail from scratch once again - i just find it pointless, because now I'm SURE i will have issues on the mac side after that.
What would you suggest then?

P.S.:
Sorry for taking so long. My "vacation" took more time than I've expected.

Ilia shared an idea in Soocial on July 12, 2009 04:45:

Implement timezone when showing user's local time in webapp.

I think it will be convenient enough to show the user all time-related data (e.g. backup creation date-time or last sync date-time) in user's local time (including his local timezone offset). Right now webapp showes it in CET, right?

A comment on the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

Looks good after sceduled sync with GMail. No extra name added ;) – Ilia, on July 12, 2009 04:39

Ilia replied on July 11, 2009 20:52 to the problem "Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book" in Soocial:

OK, heroes.
As you may suggest I was dying to check out the news :)
Here's what I've done:

First of all Tiago is probably aware of my story about vcf import problems,
'casue today I've tried my luck to upload all my good contacts from vcf
"next day" in hope that the problem will vapour itself like it did
here.
But eventually, with no success, although you told me you did it alright.

Then I came to another idea:

• upload this vcf into gmail account;


• delete connection to it in soocial;


• delete all conacts in soocial and


• after that reconnect it back with gmail.

It worked! GMail seamlessly restored all my data, and then gladly exported
it to soocial.
Moreover, I was lucky enough to find out, that the problem with vanishing
groups vanished itself!
But.
I also found out, that all organization contacts synced from gmail still have those
first and last names. It was not a big problem for me to edit them back to
normal, but I'm pretty much unshure that this result will persist in the future,
after inevitable sync with gmail. Anyway will find out next morning.
So what was it? Didn't I understand you well? Or bug again? Or my freshly
restored contacts in gmail are "corrupted" once again?

The main story, however, is to be continued after soocial <-> mac sync,
which will be held next thursday. Stay tuned!

Ilia reported a problem in Soocial on July 10, 2009 07:49:

Soocial adds unnecessary data after syncing business contacts with gmail and address book

OK, I've got several business contacts (which are flagged "company" in address book). For instance, it will be "Apple Inc." which is present in address book by default. If I sync it with soocial, soocial gets "work, pref" tags for its working phone. If I change it in soocial to just "work", and sync it back - no problem, it still appeares as "work" in address book. Now, if I sync it from soocial with GMail, then, change something in it in GMail and sync it back - then soocial adds First name "Apple" and last name "Inc."! And the story repeats itself - I have to manually delete this data each time, and then sync it back to GMail.
Now, I don't want soocial to automatically add first and last names for contacts which have an organization. And I don't want a label "pref" to appear in my phone numbers after syncing with mac.
Any ideas? A bug? A feature? ;)

Ilia marked one of Bart's replies in Soocial as useful. Bart replied to the question "Gmail Sync Interval Timing?".

Ilia marked one of Stefan Fountain's replies in Soocial as useful. Stefan Fountain replied to the question "How do you plan to support matching of fields that Outlook has no room for?".

Ilia replied on July 09, 2009 15:09 to the question "How do you plan to support matching of fields that Outlook has no room for?" in Soocial:

Thanks, Stefan. Thanks, Bart.
That pretty much explains everything.
I guess my frustration could be explained because I thought that Bart's responce was sorta final vision, a principle position. I'm happy you proved me wrong.
Sure thing, if webapp (or outlook client) could explicitly give the user power to match custom labels it would be awesome. And sure thing it takes a lot of time to develop. But your vector is pointing in right direction.
However, as about the problem of uncertainty described by Stefan, I really was aware of it, and i do know how to solve it. I could easely take you into details if you want ;)
Still, it may be irrelevant, 'cause the explicit matching could be the best solution of all.

Ilia replied on July 09, 2009 12:08 to the question "How do you plan to support matching of fields that Outlook has no room for?" in Soocial:

Wow.
A questionable decision. I bet people do not expect to see such behaviour from the service which is labeled "hassle-free". I suggest you should explicitly tell this to your users however hard it may be.
Frankly speaking, if I wasn't aware of how dangerous it is to mess with Outlook (and now BlackBerry, thanks!), I would be enough angry with such an answer. Because you actually corner the user giving him only two options: either monkey around with trick-and-tweak, or simply throw your business app/business phone away...
I belive that still my solution is better "workaround" for a user. With all due respect and understanding that you don't have time for everything, it seems to me that "We don't like to do that" actually means "We don't want to do that".

Ilia replied on July 09, 2009 09:20 to the problem "Webapp does not show group in some contacts" in Soocial:

Yep. Sent you my info.

Ilia replied on July 08, 2009 14:02 to the problem "Saving unchanged contact adds garbage data in web interface." in Soocial:

Sure.
Vista sp2, Chrome 2.0.172.33

But, hey! Now I also can't reproduce it. Damn! %)
Yesterday I reloaded, logged out and in several times, but the bug
persisted.

That's pity the bug's gone with no goodbyes. That was a weird one ))
I think you may close the thread for now. If I will come up once again
I will reopen it.