Loghound.com

GoogleFill

11/16/2006: WARNING. Due to changes on the GoogleSide GoogleFill appears to be broken right now.


GoogleFill is a Address Book plug-in that allows automatic insertion of US Addresses based on phone numbers using the reverse number lookup in Google.
 

 
 
What does this do?
 
It’s actually harder to explain than to actually show it:

I own a Treo 650 cell phone... Great phone and one of the features it has is when you dial a number not in the address book it says ‘Do you want to add this number?’

So I end up with lots of numbers in my cell phone address book without any corresponding information (e.g. who it is, where they are from, etc.).   GoogleFill is my solution to the problem.  Say I got a call from 202-456-1111 and I allowed the phone to add it to it’s address book.  The next time I synced up with my mac the number would show up without any details/

To use it simple click on the phone number (don't click on the actual number, click on the word 'work' in this case)
 

 
 
It will use Google to try to find a name and Address for the phone number listed.  If it’s successful it will tell you (if not it should also tell you it couldn’t).   In this case we are in luck! Now I remember, this is when George W called me to ask me a favor!
 

 
If you press ‘OK’ it will insert the information automatically into the address book
 

 
 
Of course in this case it found a ‘Business’ address so it properly put it down as a work address.... If it had found a residential address it would have properly labeled it as a ‘home’ address

Download version 1.2 Here
* Improved support for the Atsy Crowd -- you can now put a period between your phone numbers
* Improved address gathering

Download version 1.1 Here
* Now with universal Binary Goodness!
* Improved address gathering
 
Download Version 1.0 here
 
 
 
FAQ
 
 
Q: how much does this cost?
A: It’s free... if you find it useful donations are gratefully accepted (paypal me at loghound @ gmail . com)(even a few bucks can keep me in beer money)
Q: How is this licensed
A: See license information below.. In general it’s free for non commercial use (if you want to use it commercially somehow contact me  at loghound at gmail dot com)
 
Q: is this dangerous, can it hurt my system or destroy my data?
A: Possibly... While all care is taken to preserve data it is modifying the address book and there is some chance it can destroy data so back up.  What it tries to do is if it finds an already existing address is to rename it to ‘Old-Work’ or ‘Old-Home’ so you the risk of loosing data seems small but the best advice is to backup your data before using it.
 
Q: I want to get rid of it!  how do I uninstall it?
A: Simply delete the file ‘/Library/Address book Plug-Ins/GoogleFill.bundle’
Q: Every phone number I try comes back without an address!
A: It only works for US phone numbers... Even in the US it doesn’t work a lot.  In general if you have an unlisted number it won’t be able to find it.  If you want to test it to see if it’s actually working try adding 419-866-8877 to your address book (Joes Crab Shack).  It should find that fine.
 
Q: Only in the US? What kind of Xenophobe are you? Why don’t you support Europe, Japan, etc.
A: I’d love to, I’m just not sure how--Google seems to only index US phone numbers.... if someone can point me to a way to do a similar thing for other countries I’d be happy to include it (loghound at gmail dot com)
Q: Why did you create this?
A: I had way too many records from my cell phone that had only a number of a name/number
Q: What does it insert when?  It sometimes updates the name and sometimes not?
A: In general I don’t touch the ‘name’ of the contact unless one of them is empty.  If you don’t have a name (or are missing first or last name) I’ll try to insert them for you.
Q: Why do I have all of these ‘old-home’ and ‘old-work’ entries all of a sudden?
A: That is what I rename the stuff you already had there...  If you are happy with the new information it’s easy to go into edit mode and delete the old labels.
Q: This is crap!  It doesn’t work/it crashes/ I don’t like it for some reason?
A: Really?  Sorry to hear that... let me know why (loghound @ gmail . com)
Q: This is great!  I love it!  How can I help support more of this development
A: Donations accepted, even a few token dollars are appreciated you can paypal me at loghound @ gmail . com



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License .