<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Gigaom]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://gigaom.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Kif Leswing]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[http://search.gigaom.com/author/kifleswing1/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Google Contacts gets a long-overdue update]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Google <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-new-google-contacts-bringing.html">announced Tuesday</a> that it&#8217;s releasing a preview of its new Google Contacts app, which can be accessed now. If you use Gmail, you use a form of Google Contacts, although it&#8217;s hardly a perfect system. Previously, Google&#8217;s contact app was a mess: It threw people you&#8217;ve emailed once into a big list, mixed up with best friends and coworkers and someone you might have added to a circle in Google Plus. Long and messy contact lists may have led to some errant emails last week <a title="Autocomplete fail: Gmail is suggesting the wrong email addresses" href="https://gigaom.com/2015/02/23/autocomplete-fail-gmail-is-suggesting-the-wrong-email-addresses/">thanks to a autocomplete bug in Gmail</a>.</p>
<p>The Google Contacts update is bringing a ton of long-requested features, including a complete redesign using Google&#8217;s Material Design look. It&#8217;s got a feature to remove contacts you have stored twice, or for contacts who, for instance, have their email address and phone number stored separately. When I first logged on, it recommended I cut 18 duplicate contacts.</p>
<p><a href="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/contacts-preview-1-5.png"><img  src="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/contacts-preview-1-5.png?w=804&#038;h=552" alt="Contacts preview 1.5" width="804" height="552" data-attribution="Google" class=" aligncenter" /></a></p>
<p>Another improvement is that Google will stick your recent correspondence with someone below their contact information. When you look a contact up, you&#8217;ll see when Google thinks you were last in touch. Google also said that it&#8217;ll keep your contacts up to date when people you know change their profile information.</p>
<p><a href="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/contacts-preivew-4-5.png"><img  src="https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/contacts-preivew-4-5.png?w=804&#038;h=750" alt="Contacts preivew 4.5" width="804" height="750" data-attribution="Google" class=" aligncenter" /></a></p>
<p>You&#8217;ll note that <a href="And%20like Google Inbox, for now the new contacts page is ">Google&#8217;s blog post</a> never mentions Google+ &#8212; only &#8220;Google profile information.&#8221; The old contacts integration with Google+ was a headache for people who didn&#8217;t use the social network, and this new app could partially reflect Google&#8217;s recent decision <a href="https://gigaom.com/2015/03/02/so-long-google-hello-streams-photos-and-hangouts/">to split up Google+</a>, as well as its revolving cast of managers.</p>
<p>Like Google Inbox, for now, the new contacts page is for Gmail users only, and it&#8217;s not available for people using Google Apps.</p>
<p>Android phones use Google Contacts as the de facto default contact syncing service &#8212; which means that millions of Android users were walking around with contact apps full of errors, mistakes and duplicates. Hopefully we&#8217;ll see some of the new features trickle down to smartphones. You can try out the new Contacts preview <a href="http://contacts.google.com/preview">here</a>.</p>
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