Restore Leopard Address Book’s power to dial and text
Nova Media has released version 2.0 of its Phone plugins software, which restores to Leopard users the lost ability to dial phone numbers and send text messages in Address Book. And not only that, but more widely across a range of apps.
Phone Plugins installs itself as a System Preference pane.
After installation, you need to hook up a mobile phone to your Mac via Bluetooth by following the simple instructions onscreen. It recognised my old Nokia E60 without a problem:

Then, when the connection is established, right-clicking on a contact’s phone number in Address Book produces two new entries in the contextual menu:

The text/SMS interface is nice and simple and gets the job done. It offers a running total of remaining characters and a spell-check option:

Clicking “Dial number with E60″ initiates a call on your mobile/cell (unsurprisingly!).
Both options are available outside Address Book, system-wide in the Services menu. Just highlight the number and select the option you want from Services (or, if you do this a lot, bind it to a keyboard shortcut with an app like Service Scrubber
).
Phone Plugins works with a list of supported phones which Nova Media provides
so check that yours is on the list before you try to install it.
Phone Plugins is shareware and features a very robust nag screen.
It costs €9,95 (c. USD 15.50) and a demo version is available from Nova Media’s web site
.
For a donation-ware option, take a look at the emitSMS Widget in an earlier Hawk Wings post.
Similar Posts:
- Sending SMS messages with Address Book
- Replace Leopard Address Book’s missing SMS feature
- GoogleFill 1.1: Get addresses from phone numbers
- GCalSync: Sync your cell/mobile with GCal
- Emoticon patent application :-(
Tags: Address Book, Apple, cell phones, contacts, dialing, Leopard, mobile phones, phone numbers, SMS, text

June 18th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Now if the iphone just got support for this, but Apple would not.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I must admit, while I was writing this and scrambling around to find my pre-iPhone Nokia, that I was thinking exactly the same thing!
June 19th, 2008 at 5:36 am
[...] the iPhone is not compatible.Nova Media Phone plugins is $9.95 and a demo is available.[via Hawk Wings]Read | Permalink | Email [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 7:04 am
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