Plaxo, the once famous company for its address book service, is restarting operations to once again focus on solving the increasing problem of how to keep contact information updated and relevant.
As part of the plan, the company is unveiling a family of address book-related services, including Plaxo Personal Assistant, which is described as a “completely new service that intelligently makes automatic updates to your address book.”
Using Plaxo, people can unify their contacts, eliminate duplicates and synchronize across platforms and devices, including Outlook, Entourage, Mac Address Book and Gmail; as well as social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. Additionally, Plaxo also compares contact information from public sources with information in your address book. If it thinks there is new, accurate information, Personal Assistant makes a recommendation that you can accept or reject.
Plaxo’s family of services is now composed of:
- Plaxo Basic: Unification of fragmented contact info, access anywhere, anytime; now includes Plaxo De-Duper (free service).
- Plaxo for Mobile: Apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile (free service); Android app is coming soon.
- Plaxo eCards: Cards for 50+ occasions and birthday reminders (free/paid service).
- Plaxo Platinum Sync: Two-way, real-time sync keeps your address book consistent and accessible from the essential communication tools you use (paid service).
- Plaxo Personal Assistant: New intelligent service which automatically maintains critical address book information (paid service).
And that’s like a start. For the second quarter of this year, Plaxo plans to refresh its Outlook toolbar, update and add new mobile platforms, and add more data sources to Personal Assistant.