Mike Stenhouse's dashboard

Mike Stenhouse started following the idea "Application: 4 on Demand" in boxee.

Mike Stenhouse started following the idea "Simplify Media" in boxee.

Mike Stenhouse started following the idea "Simplify Media" in boxee.

Mike Stenhouse started following the idea "Simplify Media" in boxee.

Mike Stenhouse started following the question "Web service for playlist metadata" in Spotify.

Mike Stenhouse started following the idea "Supporting remote/local iTunes libraries." in boxee.

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 26, 2008 17:19 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

@bart:
Has the dedupe and sync run? I still have some duplicates in the Soocial web interface and my GMail contacts don't appear to have changed at all...

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 26, 2008 12:48 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

@bart:
That sounds grand. So is work being done on the duplicate contacts in GMail problem that I have? If your priorities are elsewhere it's cool but I don't want to waste my time cleaning up if Soocial is going to keep adding dupes...

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 25, 2008 00:24 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

@stefan
Many thanks for your reply. To be clear: I know that you guys are trying to tackle a hard problem and I know that bugs are inevitable. My frustration comes from not knowing what's going on. The last thing I posted was a long description of my workflow (after being asked by one of you chaps) and I didn't hear anything in return. It might be something that GetSatisfaction is missing - a way to mark reports as "in progress" or similar.

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 24, 2008 19:29 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

Agreed - synchronisation is definitely a hard problem.

Put it another way though: we're providing free feedback for what will presumably become a paid-for product. Without us there would have to be a few extra Soocial Q&A, marketing and product guys plus a room full of hardware, new and old, for testing. It's beta code and we're using it for free; it's costing me time and I don't have too much of that to spare.

I actually don't mind that there are bugs but I'm finding GetSatisfaction to be very unsatisfying. None of my issues have been resolved yet and staff seem to have moved on to newer comments. It's fair enough - they have jobs to do, after all, but the customer dissatisfaction echo chamber isn't helping my morale as a user.

Mike Stenhouse marked one of Brian Suda's replies in Get Satisfaction as useful. Brian Suda replied to the idea "Stop asking for Twitter passwords". Mike Stenhouse and 10 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 20, 2008 18:53 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

So did anything ever happen with this? I turned off syncing with AddressBook.app to avoid my primary contact list being ruined but my Gmail address book still contains loads of dupes. It was fairly clean before I turned on Soocial syncing so I'm not massively happy.

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 04, 2008 15:42 to the question "I have a load of blank contacts" in Soocial:

Roughly speaking, here's what I think I did:

I've had Soocial AddBk.app sync running in the background for ages. I was using it mostly as a backup, rather than a sync though and I didn't check the web interface. A month or so ago I got an iPhone and had a proper cleanup of the contacts in AddBk.app. I went through and removed all duplicates, combining as many by hand as possible. I got it to a pretty clean state.

I enabled AddBk.app's Gmail syncing to see what would happen. After the first sync I went back again and cleaned up. As time went on though, duplicates started to re-appear. Not many, but it was irritating.

I decided to see what state Soocial's Gmail connector was in. I'm fairly sure the blank contacts were in Soocial at this point.

So I turned off AddBk's Gmail sync and added Soocial's Gmail sync instead. I made a backup of my address book first... It took a couple of days for syncing to start but when I looked again, I had loads of dupes.

I've posted to getsatisfaction almost as soon as I've spotted problems so if you check my timeline you'll get more exact times.

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 04, 2008 12:49 to the question "I have a load of blank contacts" in Soocial:

That's how contacts come in from Gmail though, right? The one you've picked out there is a dupe of one that does have a name in my AddressBook.app. The address may be in my Gmail contacts without a name but it's definitely in my AddressBook.app with more details.

Incidentally, AddressBook.app just uses the email address as the name if there aren't any more details. That way at least there's something to distinguish it from the other records.

If you want to try and isolate where the blanks are coming from I can send you the backup I made of my local address book before turning on Gmail syncing if you want to try and chase the origins?

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 03, 2008 15:08 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

It's definitely better but it's still not there. I have a fair few dupes (e.g. hazel culley and Hazel Culley) and there are dozens and dozens of blank contacts...

Mike Stenhouse replied on November 01, 2008 21:00 to the problem "Loads of duplicate contacts" in Soocial:

I've not got a MobileMe account and none of the AddressBook.app sync options are checked. I asked a question about GMail here the other day and was told that something "odd" was going on with my sync so maybe that's got something to do with it?

I've disabled Soocial syncing for the time being and restored my contacts to their previous state so the address book disaster is averted but I love the idea of Soocial and I'd love to use it... If you think a dedupe will help then by all means pull the switch.

Mike Stenhouse reported a problem in Soocial on October 31, 2008 16:06:

Loads of duplicate contacts

Soocial has just synchronised a LOAD of duplicate contacts into my nice, tidy address book. For some of them there are differences between the cards - an email address is in "work" instead of "other", for example. I thought this was what Soocial was supposed to fix?

Mike Stenhouse asked a question in Soocial on October 31, 2008 13:54:

I have a load of blank contacts

I have a load of duplicate contacts and a load of blank contacts showing up in the web interface. They're not making it into my Mac Address Book, luckily.

Mike Stenhouse started following the problem "Contacts multiplied and distorted." in Soocial.

Mike Stenhouse replied on October 30, 2008 16:48 to the question "Soocial stuck waiting for Gmail activation" in Soocial:

Okay, I've upgraded to 1.0b23... Where do I look to see whether everything's working?