Smartr: A brilliant contacts app for smartphones
Smart contact managers like Xobni earn their keep by providing rich profiles on all of the people you communicate with -- who they are, what they look like, how often you email them, and exactly what you said. It's all there. We've been big fans of Xobni for Outlook for a long time. It's an add-on that adds a slew of features and better search capabilities to your desktop version of Outlook. Unfortunately, we spend more and more time away from our PCs these days. We need that same depth of information on our phones.
And here it is. Xobni is available for both the iPhone and Android, in the guise of an app called Smartr.
Smartr is an elegant app that connects your email contacts with all the information it can dig up on them via services like Facebook, LinkedIn (LNKD) and Twitter. Search for a contact, and you'll see the person's complete profile, including email address and phone number, a tab full of email history (all of the messages you've exchanged, plus a graph that shows your communication frequency), and a degrees-of-separation tab that shows all the contacts whom you have in common, allowing you to drill through your address book to find a weak connection whom you need to track down.
The app is attractive, with a cool home screen that has a search box for finding contacts by name, title, company or email at the top, and featured profiles with photos from Facebook and Twitter posts at the bottom.
You don't need to use Xobni on the desktop to use Smartr on your phone, but you'll certainly get more out of the program if you do, as that allows you to share and link contacts between your desktop and mobile experiences. For that, though, you'll need the $8 a month Xobni Pro account. Either way, Smartr is an awesome productivity tool.
