Benjamin Harley has written an applescript that merges Gmail and Address Book contacts.

It works by taking a CSV file of your exported Gmail contacts (which you need to create first), and comparing it to the contacts in your Address Book. Any contacts not found in the Address Book are added.

Contacts in Address Book but not in Gmail are added and the merged CSV file is then imported back into Gmail.

All of this and more is explained carefully in a ReadMe file for the script, which you should read before using the script.

As Benjamin explains, the script is a labour of love (he wrote it initially for his girlfriend) and is not widely tested. He welcomes feedback on how it works for you. You’ll find an email address on his web site.

ABGMerge is donation-ware and is available from Benjamin’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, address book, gmail, email, merge, contacts, synchronization, Google

Since I read on macOSXHints that everyone in the USA is shopping for teletubbie dolls today, it’s a good time to post things with a more international flavour.

Annard Brouwer has written an Address Book plugin that provides look-ups for European addresses through the ViaMichelin map service.

They may well be more accurate than other mapping services and come with pretty scaled images of significant landmarks:

Installation is easy. Download the script from Annard’s web site and place the plugin in your ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins folder.

Restart Address Book and you will see a “Via Michelin map of …” option in the contextual menu that appear when you click on the label of a European address.

Other plugins exist which do something similar for European addresses and you can find them in the Address Book section of this site’s plugin list.

[Thanks, Annard]address book, maps, Michelin, contacts, Europe

Ross at Simplehelp has written an excellent tutorial with screenshots on how to get your contact information out of the Gmail and into Address Book for use in Mail.app.

The app used in the process is called Address Book Importer , a clever utility that allows the user complete control over how to map the fields for import. It is also free for a single use (although the developer asks for a small donation if you use it regularly).

He has just released a beta version (2.0.5b3) which is a universal binary and features several fine-tuning tweaks.

The interface is clean and easy to understand:

The tutorial even tells you what to do with the mysterious “name” entry that appears when the import is finished.mail.app, apple mail, address book, gmail, contacts, importing, CSV, universal binary

Adium Book is a utility that can synchronise Adium’s contact list and your Address Book.

The new version (1.3) released today is a universal binary, features some performance tweaks to improve the app’s speed and fixes some issues with Jabber accounts. It also offers support for multiple IM accounts in its Address Book view.

The interface has been reworked:

With Adium Book you can add Adium contacts to Address Book or update the information on an Address Book card using data from Adium.

It allows full text search of Adium contacts and Address Book and provides a range of reports, among them a listing of contacts without pictures, contacts in Adium but not in Address Book or a listing of contacts by IM service.

Adium book is donation-ware and is available from the Adium Extra’s web site or the developer’s webs site .not apple mail, adium, address book, contacts, IM, chat, universal, reports, instant messaging

For the next twenty hours MacUpdate is offering a 21% discount on BuddyPOP, an excellent “quick look-up” utility for Address Book.

Once installed, pressing a user-definable hotkey pops up a dialog window to search and match your Address Book contacts.

It then displays that contact’s information:

Of course you can do the same thing with Quicksilver, but BuddyPOP has an extra trick up its sleeve. It offers a very quick way to get info out of your Address Book into a Mail.app message (or any other kind of document).

BuddyPOP also handles Skype, X-Lite SIP SoftPhone and Vonage, has support for sending and receiving SMS messages via a Bluetooth-enabled phone.

A steal at USD 9.99. Snap it up from MacUpdate.address book, contacts, productivity, dialler, skype, SMS, apple mail, mail.app, quicksilver

An updated version of Export Address Book brings support for vCards and Address Book groups.

Export Address Book is an app which exports all the data in your Address Book into an independent data file that you can archive or import elsewhere or use for merges with apps like Word and FileMaker.

In the latest version you can now export your contacts as vCards, either as multiple files or as one vCard with multiple entries. You can select what information from the Address Book record should be included in the vCard.

When you add contacts, you can now specify Group information which will automatically update in any documents you create with its data.

Export Address Book is shareware (12.50 Euros = USD 16) and is available from the developer’s web site .address book, exporting, contacts, vcards, groups, productivity

Export Address Book is an app which exports all the data in your Address Book into an independent data file that you can archive or import elsewhere or use for merges with apps like Word and FileMaker.

It allows you to select which contacts to export, which fields from those contacts and how to order them, settings which can be saved as a template for repeated use:

An updated version (1.2) adds support for UTF-16 encoding, which provides full multilingual compatibility for Word 2004 merges or FileMaker databases.

It also features more flexible drag ‘n’ drop capabilities for contacts and contact information fields.

The help menu offers basic guidance and information about things like text encodings:

Export Address Book is shareware (10 Euros = USD 12.50) and is available from the developer’s web site .address book, exporting, contacts, word, merges, filemaker, productivity