But what if I didn’t have to think about doing backup all the time, just let it happen with minimum effort on my side? Well, I think about it later…

And then, all of sudden THIS happens. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing as dramatic as flushing your mobile down the toilet or get robbed in some doggy alley. Actually its quite a cliché because… my battery simply gone dead. Not unusual, but with thrilling consequences this time.

I got locked up in the office. The person leaving just before me, thought I wasn’t there anymore. People that could help me, have already finished their work and I had no keys or wallet. Luckily, there was one stationary phone available. However, since my mobile was dead and I’m not Rain Man type of genius who would remember all the numbers… I couldn’t use it.

But I did have my computer and the Internet connection, so my first thought was – ha! I still got Contails, I’m saved. But… You see, I didn’t sync my mobile phone with Contails for about 3 months and most contacts that I could use in this situation has changed or just wasn’t there. Luckily, there was one contact (seriously, just one!) in Contails, and that one got me another and so on and so on until I had the number to my friend who set me free. I still try to imagine, what would I do, if I didn’t have the mobile phonebook on the internet.

One could say

- Next time, make sure you’ve got the keys – you won’t need backup, just “the brain”.

That’s true. But since it’s so simple, fast and easy… I would rather sync as often as possible just to minimize a chance of a lonely night in the office and bunch of other situations where I could get stuck because I was too lazy and easy going to press one button.

This FAQ secton will show you how to configure your mobile to synchronize with Contails.

First you have to choose a Synchronize mobile option from right column, or Mobiles option from upper menu.

Next you have to choose what brand is the mobile you want to configure. You can use icons of the most popular brands, or drop down list for all brands.

When the manufacturer is selected, you must select the specific model. You can find it on the list of mobiles (using its name and how it looks) or by typing model name into the input.

Next step ist to verify your phone number. You have to set your country, mobile operator and mobile number. Filling reCaptcha is necessary to prove that you are human, not a bot. Finally click Send verification SMS button.

After that you should receive a SMS with verification code. Simply read it and type the code in proper field on the page you see, then click Verify number button.

After your number has been verified you should receive a configuration SMS. Follow the instructions in this SMS. When your mobile asks you for PIN, just enter 1234. If everything went OK click Continue, otherwise select appropriate option.

Congratulations! your mobile has been succesfully configured to synchronize with Contails. The final step is to run synchronization process in your mobile phone. To do that, simply follow the instruction on the last page of the Synchronization Wizard.

Sometimes, the same person is put under different names in different address books. When you import contacts from many sources, you can find that one person is duplicated in contact list. It happens only when contacts are similar, but there are some differences between them. Exact duplicates are merged automatically, and you don’t have to worry about them.

Contails can detect duplicates, and show them to the user as a Merge suggestions in the left and right column. If you want to take care of duplicates, just click one of these options.

After clicking Merge suggestions link, you will see a merging form. In the middle column, all merge suggestion will be shown, and on the right column details of chosen suggestion (chosen suggestion is marked blue on the list). You can navigate between suggestions by choosing a suggestion from the list, or clicking Previous/Next links in the right column.

After selecting one of the suggestions, you can choose which details should be included in merged contact, and which should be deleted. You can also exclude a contact from merge process by unchecking a box next to it.

By clicking one of the contacts from merge suggestion, you can check which details come from it – they are highlighted with yellow color. This can help you to determine which details are correct.

If you decide that some of the suggestions are wrong and you don’t want to be bothered by them in the future, click Forget this suggestion to cancel one particular suggestion or Forget all link if you don’t want to merge any suggested contacts.

If you decided to merge selected suggestion and it’s details, simply click Merge to finish the process.

To import contacts from external source (e.g. .csv file or webmail account), choose Import contacts option from the right column.

On the next screen, pick a source of contacts you wish to import (i.e. File), then click Continue button.

Next, you must specify the file type, then using the Browse button, you have to find that file on your hard disk. Then click Continue button.

On the next screen you will see if Contails was able to read your file properly. If yes, click Import.

Next step is choosing a label for newly imported contacts. Contails lets you choose between existing labels, no label and new label, with default name which you can change. Make your choice and click Continue button.

On the last screen you will see summary information about import. How many contats were imported, and if there are any merge suggestions. If you need to merge something click Merge duplicates link, otherwise click Go to contact list link.

It came up that people don’t need nor expect fancy interface… they want things to be simple and easy to use. It’s a knowledge you gain through experience (reading dozen of books about it won’t teach you anything). So here we are, with the new simple interface, few features added and few removed.

New features are:

• Ability to share contacts with your friends registered on Contails.com.
• Eventuality to separate the list of contacts for the various devices. If you have several different phones (eg private and business), by using labels, you can create separate contacts lists for each of those phones.

We hope you’ll enjoy what we did to  the service.

That’s some way to lose Your contacts

Read the whole story at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1553538/Thousands-not-flush-after-phone-mishaps.html

This is the beta version, however we already started to make use of it and we’re sharing contacts with lots of our friends, families and acquaintances ourselves. To save your time, let us briefly say what functionalities we support at the moment, what we know needs fixing and what some of our future plans are.

Highlighted benefits:
— synchronize mobiles with native SyncML support (SMS configuration) or with SyncML software installed
— synchronize multiple mobiles, copy contacts from one mobile to another using labels
— import contacts from GMail, Yahoo and Windows Live (secure authentication provided)
— import contact lists from MS Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird
— export contacts to several file formats
— automatically merge contacts (based on smart suggestions)
— connect with Contails community (automated friends discovery)
— ask friends for contacts and shared contact’s details (requires contact owners approval)
— search for contacts on your connected friends’ lists (just the amounts)
— private messaging and network invitations

Needs fixing:
— translation (we don’t speak all these languages fluently, but we’re learning hard!)
— some usability aspects (this is always worth the investment)
— some phone models support

Future plans (but you know we can’t disclose everything):
— more tuning, more fixing, more localization
— greater contacts availability
— more sources of import and synchronization
— social networks feeds attached to your contacts
— sharing groups of contacts
— mass-update features
… and some really cool surprises! We will update you as soon as we’ll be ready to show.

We hope our service will work really good for you and we will appreciate all kinds of feedback, support and criticism!

The Contails Team

Dawid Wójcicki