ContactsTap Version 1.4 has been submitted
ContactsTap release 1.4 has been submitted and we can expect its approval by the end of next week.
What’s new in this release:
- Initial contacts load has been sped up.
- New fields were added to Display Additional contact info feature. Now the application can display Group names, Company name, Department, Job title, Nick name, Phone numbers, Fax numbers, Pager, Emails, Phonetic names and Birthday. These fields can be displayed at the application main screen contacts list in the item second row.
- I have changed the appearance of the application mode where the contact list is sorted by the company name. In this mode the Company name is now displayed in the first row with larger font, and the first and last names in the second row with a smaller font.
- New animated menu has been added to the main application screen.
- You can place a call, send email, send text, show contacts group, deleting contact and send vCard directly from main application screen simply by tapping at the contact’s name and choosing an option from the new action menu.
- You can swipe to delete contacts at the main application screen. Simply swipe with your finger across the contact to delete it. Then tap on delete button to delete it, or tap anywhere else to cancel the delete process.
- Share contact feature (sending vCard) has been changed. Now the vCard includes some new fields. You can send nick name, Phonetic first and last name, related names, birthday and contact’s photo.
- The search feature has been fixed. When you do a search and type done leaving the list in filter mode, the application keeps this mode until you remove the search text from the search field. Even if you add new contact or delete it, it will be added or removed from the filtered list if it matches the search pattern.
- When you search the contacts list the application searches the list in the background allowing the keyboard on screen to be much more responsive.
- Toolbar has been removed from the Contacts info screen and its options transformed to the new main application animated menu.
- A new field has been added to the Contacts info screen. This is Related Names field where you can specify your relatives (spouse, child, …)
- The dialogue for typing the email address to share contacts has been fixed.
- New feature for sending email to the selected list of contacts has been added. Now you can send an email to a members of a group or select contacts and create a temporary distribution list and send the email to it.
- Toolbar has been removed from the Groups screen and its options moved to the new Groups animated menu. The menu has been moved to the navigation bar (top right corner of the screen near plus button). There you can choose options for sending email to a group or temporary distribution list as well as manage contacts.
We will be adding some interesting new features to our next release 1.5 — so stay tuned!
sylvain hoo
July 24, 2009 - 7:40 am
i love this program, it’s the best on itunes to do search, the only still problem is that this application as to reload from scratch wen we do a call.
it’s taking a lot of time since i have 5000 contacts.
is there a way to let the program stay open an not reload each time we phone, email or change application
thanks
please reply
admin
July 24, 2009 - 8:38 pm
Hi,
The new release 1.4 has a fix for initial contacts download which suppose to almost double a speed of initial contacts download. It shall be available at iTunes store for couple of days and update to it is free of charge. There are many new cool features in this release and search is even faster.
The new 1.5 release will be available only to users who have iPhone 3GS or have updated their iPod or iPhone devices with new iPhone 3.0 operating system. The 1.5 release has new in-application email which means you do not have to leave application if you want to send an email to any of the contacts from your contacts list.
Unfortunately there is no way to to run two applications at a time on the iPhone device so if you want to make a call the iPhone device will kill the ContactsTap application and then place a call. This has to do with the behavior of iPhone device and not with ContactsTap, so I cannot do anything about it.
SteveHK
August 6, 2009 - 3:18 am
I have one feature request, which I think would need/mean syncing with Outlook. That is to have the Outlook contact category reflected in the ContactsTap categories. I have over 6,500 contacts and categories are very useful.
I think it is a great product and I have just installed 1.4
admin
August 6, 2009 - 8:36 am
Hi,
The syncing procedure is something that I cannot change. That process is done by the Outlook on one side and iTunes on other. No application can interfere with this process, thus neither ContactsTap can. What is synced (which data and in which form) during the syncing process is dictated first by Outlook and then by iTunes. Outlook does not sync categories to the iPhone device (iTunes) so it is not possible to reflect your categories on ContactsTap.
What’s left to be done is the improvement of iTunes and syncing procedure and this only can be done by Apple and Microsoft. There are many reports about this on Apple developers’ forums so I hope Apple will consider it seriously and implement some fixes in the future releases of iTunes and MAC Address Book.
These are the known issues with Outlook:
1. ContactsTap is not compatible with any 3rd party application which deals with contacts syncing.
2. It is iTunes which deals with Outlook syncing process.
3. If you are using Windows and Outlook then all groups created at the ContactsTap application shall be synced at Outlooks Folders not Categories. Outlook Categories shall not be synced with iTunes. All contacts organized under Categories shall be synced under Uncategorized group.Therefore, it is better to organize contacts under Folders if you want to have them converted to groups on iPhone. These are all Outlook issues and ContactsTap have no control over it.
Andrew
August 19, 2009 - 3:19 am
“New field has been added to the Contacts info screen. That field is related names where you can specify your relatives (spouse, child, …)”
Is this only 1 new field or are you able to add any number of fields with different labels? ie Assistant Contact number?
admin
August 19, 2009 - 7:23 pm
Hi,
first when you tap on add new related name it shows the screen which allows you to input the name of the related contact or person and in the second field the label for that name. There are some predefined label by iPhone itself (work, home, other) but you tap on that field and you’ll see the list and the last option should be Add Custom Label. Tapping on that option you can create your custom label.
Some of the users reported that there are some known problems with iTunes and MobeleMe when you syncing contacts with related names (and it is not related to ContactsTap). It can happen that if you sync the contact with the related name and label which does not exist on iPhone (it has not been created yet) then its not showing the corect label for that contac (for instance you sync the contact with label sister and it shows you brother on iPhone).
Cheers
Dejan
Farida
August 22, 2009 - 5:39 pm
I have just bought Contacts Tap in teh app store. I initially loved the app but noticed two things that make me les enthousiatic:
1) The special ringtones that I’ve given to some contacts from the original (own) Iphone contacts are not selected when I open these contacts in the Contacts Tap. Why is this. Everything else is the same except this.
2) I am not able to send Vcards. I’ve set up an email account with the right information. But If I try to send a Vcard I get the message: sharing selected contact’s data as vCard failed!
So promising, but not fully working for me.
admin
August 22, 2009 - 7:09 pm
Hi,
You haven’t read the Special notes in the description of this application: it says that ContactsTap does not support the custom ringtones because Apple does not allow for third party applications to support them. There is no API for that, which is why I am not able to implement it. None of the contacts management applications in AppStore support this feature because of that (except the native one of course).
About sending vCards. Which client are you using for your emails (example GoogleMail, Yahoo, MobileMe, …)?
What did you type in the fields for setting up this feature (do not send me your password)?
If you send me this information I can help you set up this feature. There is a release 2.0 of this app which will use the email feature within the application, which means you won’t have to leave the app to send an email. It will be sent directly from the application and you won’t have to set up your email like on 1.5 release as it will use the setting you provided to device itself; so you won’t have any problems with it in the future.
Cheers
Dejan
vaibhav
August 26, 2009 - 3:30 pm
Hi,
Can we make groups separate for the business and personal contacts.
and password protect them?
admin
August 26, 2009 - 7:06 pm
Hi,
that is an interesting feature but unfortunately it would not work like you expected.
Whenever you sync your data with your device (using iTunes) all groups and contacts change its unique number to match the same one with device you are syncing with. That means it would be really hard to recognize later which group is in business and which is in personal as all data changed its unique ID. As you suggested from the app you should select the groups for business use and then the app suppose to store that somewhere in its own persistent store. Later when you start the app it suppose to recognize groups by its ID which can be change without application control and application would not be able to recognize the data in that case.
Many apps tried to persist something related with contacts but that is not good idea because it can mislead the app in its stored relationship between data. If you use name of the group that one is also no good idea as you can change the name of the group on your desktop machine and sync data back and app will not be able to recognize it. This happens only because Apple did not allowed to any third party application to control or observe the process of syncing which would be useful for this feature.
What I can do is to create the feature which will use business contacts from different source then iPhone address book but then those contacts would not be synced with your desktop machine. For instance I have a web site which is capable of collecting those data from multiple users but then I do not know if users would like to store its sensitive data to someone’s web database and to be sure that it would not be used for some purposes without its knowledge as all about contacts is meter about security of the data. Then I can develop application for desktop computers which would be capable of syncing that data which means in the whole process of manipulating your contacts you will use multiple applications which I do not think is a good user experience.
I will think about this if there is another way of organizing the groups like you suggested and let you know about the solution.
Is that OK?
Farida
August 28, 2009 - 8:12 am
Hello Dejan,
Thanks for your answer. Sorry, I did not read the extra information about the ringtones.
About the provider to send emails: I’m using a dutch provider (hccnet) since I live in the Netherlands and this is the primary account on my iphone. I don’t have googlemail or mobileme. I do have a yahoo account, but don’t know the excact serverinformation.
Farida