Category: Things I Like
Contact Management Tools For Google Apps: Rainmaker and WriteThat.Name
I’ve recently discovered two awesome tools for helping me manage my contacts in Google Apps. One is a TechStars Boulder company called Rainmaker and the other is a Paris-based company called Kwaga that has an app called WriteThat.Name.
I’ve got a large address book in Gmail (> 11,000 contacts). I get numerous new inbound contacts on a regular basis from people reaching out to me and Google automatically puts their email address in Google Contacts, which is cool. However, it doesn’t put any additional info – either from the email body (which often has contact info in it) or from other sources like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – which often has a lot more contact info, including a photo.
Let’s start with WriteThat.Name. Once you tie it to you Google account, it automatically scans emails, parses out any contact info it finds, and automagically adds it to the contact record. I’ve been looking for this for a very long time (over a decade) – I’ve never understood why Microsoft didn’t build this into Outlook. Sure – there have been plenty of plug-ins along the way, but nothing that “just worked” invisibly in the background. WriteThat.Name does – beautifully. After using it for a week for free I paid for it. I met the CEO Philippe Laval at lunch the other day in Paris and gave him a big hug. Do yourself a favor – try it.
The next app is Rainmaker. This is from one of the TechStars Boulder teams from this year that is just killing it. You connect it up to your social networks and your Google account. You can then selectively, or in bulk, “make it rain” on your contacts where Rainmaker will use all the magic it can to enhance your existing contacts using whatever information it can find. Like WriteThat.Name, this information is going directly into your Contact database, enhancing it dramatically.
While there is a lot more that can be done, both of these applications make good on the promise of “my computer being smarter than me.” I find that I spend almost no time in my Contacts entering data and updating it any more. All the stuff I need is there – all the time – and I can call, email, IM, chat, txt, or whatever I want without having to search around for the info.
One last hint – before you crank up any program that you give write access to your Google App data, make sure you use Spanning Backup to backup your Google Contacts, Calendar, and Docs data (we are investors in Spanning Cloud Apps, the company that does Spanning Backup.) While I’ve had no issues with either Rainmaker or WriteThat.Name, better safe than sorry!
I did eventually solve my Paris smart phone problem. Here’s what I did.
- I paid AT&T some absurd amount of money for unlimited international everything for my iPhone.
- The nice senior people at Orange sent me a SIM card that is good until the end of the month for free unlimited everything for my Android.
- Maxroam sent me a super cool device that gives me 3G and international calling for $15 / day.
But none of it matters. Because after two weeks without a smart phone, I simply don’t give a shit anymore. In general, I hate the phone and try to stay off of it. I spend my time in email, IM, and Skype when I’m in front of my computer, which is a lot. However, when I’m wandering around between things, I’ve actually started to realize the joy of looking around and noticing all of the other humans staring at the little pieces of glass they are holding in their hands. During dinner at a restaurant, I’m enjoying the idea that I’m unreachable while I shower 100% of my attention on my beloved and anyone else I’m dining with. And, when I go to the bathroom in a restaurant, I’m actually enjoying the notion that I’m not going to return to the table distracted by the emails I’ve scanned while doing my business.
Basically, except for Google Maps, I haven’t missed the phone one bit the past two weeks. And, given that I haven’t had Google Maps, I’ve gotten to wander aimlessly around a few times, using the old fashioned approach of asking for directions. Each time, I’ve ended up where I needed to be pretty close to when I was supposed to be there. Refreshing, retro, interesting – call it whatever you want – but even for this directionally impaired American it worked out ok.
I now have 3G access again everywhere I go. But I don’t really care. I’m hardly using it (at least I haven’t the past few days). I’m going to start turning off my phone at meals completely and see how that goes for a while. Or maybe I’ll just leave it in the apartment since I’m with the only person (Amy) I want to be talking to anyway.
I learned a lot from this experience. But most importantly, I once again learned the value of thinking about the problem differently and challenging a key assumption. Do I really need my phone with me and email available all of the time? Clearly not.
I’m going for a run now in the rain in Paris. Without my phone. See y’all in a while.
If you walk in my office, you’ll notice a lot of art on the walls. Amy and I are huge art collectors and are always on a quest for new and beautiful things. Over the years we’ve tried to collect photographs and sculpture in addition to contemporary art – I view us as complete novices as collectors in these two domains.
However, Amy has always been a great photographer. She carries a Nikon D-100 around and captures amazing pictures. I don’t have the eye she has so when I snap things on my cell phone they always feel ordinary to me. But I love to scroll through the endless stream of photos Amy has taken.
Recently, I got an email from Abhi Lokesh, the CEO of Fracture. He reached out in response to a post I had written (What’s Your Product Cadence). We went back and forth a few times on email, I answered a few questions, and he offered me a free Fracture. The awesome Alaska Brown Bear above is the photo I used (from an Alaska trip in 2004) and it’s now hanging on the wall in my office next to my couch.
Fracture’s goal is to inspire a renaissance in photo products and printing, replacing cheap frames and overpriced services with a practical alternative that helps you tell your life’s story visually . When I asked Abhi how he came up with the idea, he said:
“We actually came up with the idea while doing field work in Africa during the summer of 2008 for a non-profit that we created in college. It was a life-changing experience in innumerable ways. I was on my way to med school, and my partner was heading to PhD engineering school. But hey, we’ll never have less to lose and more to gain than right now, and we decided to go for it.”
Fracture is tackling the retro challenge of manufacturing and shipping a real product along with creating a digital experience and platform that makes it dead-simple for anyone to Fracture an image. My experience with the service was great, and when the Fracture arrived the packaging was well thought out, minimal, and included everything I needed to hang the Fracture on the wall.
I encourage any of you who have a favorite digital photo to give Fracture a shot.
Recently I’ve been on the receiving end of a bunch of due diligence calls. Some of them are for companies I’m involved in, some are for entrepreneurs I’ve worked with in the past, and some are for other VCs I’ve worked with who are raising new funds. I view these differently than reference calls (I won’t do reference calls for anyone) – these are not about “employment”, they are about investment and a long term working relationship.
I experience two types of due diligence calls: (1) confirmatory calls and (2) investigative calls. The confirmatory calls result when someone has clearly made their decision and is just checking the box of “I’ve made my due diligence calls.” The investigative calls tend to be much more substance – these often happen well before a decision has been made and someone is in exploratory mode.
In most cases there is either a script or standard set of questions. The interesting calls are the ones where the person on the other end clearly knows how to interview or uses a method like five whys to really get at the core of something they are interested in. I especially enjoy the ones where the person on the other end of the phone is actively developing a relationship with me, rather than just collecting data.
But on many of the calls, there is a weird question at the end. It goes something like “Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should be asking?” For a while I used to try to be polite and engage with the question. But at some point I realized it was a stupid question that someone included on a “how to do due diligence” form from 1961. So now I answer it simply with “nope.”
Here’s why I think it’s a stupid question. You are calling me for diligence on someone. Presumably you have specific things you are interested in. You’ve either done research on our previous relationship or you want me to fill you in on that. You then use this to pursue whatever line of questioning you have. If you are inquisitive and capable of reasoning, my answers will open up more questions. Eventually you will have enough information or will have reached a conclusion. If I’ve been doing my job I’ve been concentrating on answering your questions, not trying to follow your path of inquiry.
Now, while we are at the end of the inquiry, you ask me an open ended question in search of something magical. Maybe I’ll finally tell you the deep, dark, negative secret about the person that I’ve been withholding. Or I’ll come up with some incredible insight about the person that hadn’t come out in your previous line of questioning. I suppose this happens occasionally, and maybe it’s worth asking the question just on the off chance that something yummy will pop out. But I just find this an annoying way to end the conversion, so my answer from here on out is “nope.”
Every now and then my mom sends me a pile of old photos of me and my brother Daniel. Here’s one.
Notice all of the cameras. I’ve got two (I’m the shaggy haired guy on the right) and Daniel has one (he’s the short shaggy haired guy on the left.) I have no idea how old I was but I’m going to guess around 11 based on my white knee socks and light blue short shorts. I’m 99% sure the cameras are a Contax (the smaller brown one) and a Pentax. Oh – and check out that cool camera strap.
My mom is a great photographer and when we were kids we hung out in the dark room a lot. I remember how cool I thought the red light was, how bizarre the chemicals smelled, and how our washing machine and dryer made perfect tables for the printing process. Developer, stop bath, and fixer – remember that?
I stopped taking pictures when I went to college, but I can’t remember why. Maybe in the next phase of life I’ll rediscover this, possibly with a Lytro camera. I can only imagine how cool it would be to combine that with Occipital.
Amy and I have been married for 18 years. On the summer solstice in 1993 we went to the top of Ester Dome in Fairbanks, Alaska and exchanged vows. Earlier that day we went to Pay ‘n Save and bought our wedding rings (I think we got six for $1.99). I wrote the word “vows” on a piece of paper twice, tore it in half, and gave one of the vows to Amy to give to me when we got to the top. We never had a formal wedding because we never wanted one, although we did visit the Boulder County Courthouse on June 21, 1996, paid our $20, assured them that we weren’t brother and sister, and made it official. But we count years from that date on top of Ester Dome in 1993.
I can’t image having a better life partner. Like all couples, we’ve had our ups and downs, although the only real downs that I remember are the ones that catalyzed me into action to change my behavior. The list of amazing things Amy has brought into my life is extraordinarily long, but the greatest is the joy that I get from spending time with her, learning from her, and just being myself around her.
The journey through life on this planet is a complicated one. Many years ago I decided that I had no idea when the lights were going to go out so I was determined to live every single moment as fully as I could. As I get older, I want to spend more and more of these moments with Amy. We’re going to be together every day for the rest of this summer – and I’m ecstatic!
Amy – you are the most awesome person I’ve known. Thanks for choosing me.
I considered titling this post “why RSS isn’t dead” but decided that was too easy.
I don’t pay much attention to public markets. However, now that the IPO window for tech companies has opened back up there are some companies that I want to track. However, I don’t really care about the daily stock prices – instead, I’m focused on the actual SEC filings.
I used to subscribe to several services for SEC filings (remember EDGAR Online and 10KWizard) but let them lapse a while ago. My partner Jason suggested I just use the SEC website. So I went there and discovered that it’s really good.
I went to Search for Company Filings and quickly found all the companies I cared about. I then clicked on the RSS icon in my browser and subscribed to the feed for each company I was interested in using Google Reader.
Google Reader is part of my daily information routine. I subscribe to a bunch of blogs – those of all of the companies I’ve invested in, their founders and employees who blog, and a bunch of random people I like to read. I long ago unsubscribed to all the news sites – I just scan them via Twitter throughout the day. But I find 15 minutes a day with Google Reader allows me to stay current on most of the “other stuff” that I care about.
Now, whenever a company I’m tracking files something with the SEC, it’ll show up the next morning in Google Reader. Perfect – as I never need this info real time. No extra email notifications. No subscription service that I have to pay for. No need to periodically go “check on stuff.”
I love how fundamental wiring – like RSS – is – well – fundamental. It always delights me when I find a simple solution to a problem like “track SEC filings for companies I am following.”
Thanks for all the cell phone suggestions for my europe trip this summer. Of course, shortly after I wrote the post, Apple came out with an unlocked version of the iPhone 4 (which just showed up in my office) rendering many of the options (and presumably some of the companies) either obsolete or unnecessary.
However, I decided to take a different approach. I’m going to give the Nexus S another try. I’ve been using it since Friday and the most recent version is awesome. Almost all of the iPhone apps I rely on are available on Android and since I’m a Google Apps + Google Voice user, the integration is much nicer. So we’ll see how that goes.
In the mean time, I do need a recommendation for a SIM in Paris and in Tuscany. What’s the best local provider in each place?
I love nerd jokes. I was having a serious moment in front of my computer when a Google chat window popped up from a friend (who asked to remain anonymous – presumably because of his nerd shyness) with the following joke:
Werner Heisenberg is speeding down the road and a cop pulls him over.
The cop says “Sir, do you have any idea how fast your were going?”
Heisenberg says “No, but i know exactly where i am.”
This will have extra appeal to my fraternity brothers from ADP @ MIT because we made endless fun of Pierre Chao saying “I know where we are” when in fact he didn’t.
You can now return to your regularly scheduled programming.