Cobook Blog

That’s our mantra. We trully want you to be great with people! And we’ve just released a new update that makes it even easier.

Related People

You can now add names of related people to your contacts such as family, assistant etc. This is fully compatible with Related Names field in Apple’s Address Book, so if you already have them added, they will now show-up in Cobook.

Address Formating

When you add or edit an address, it’s format will change depending on the selected country. You can also set default format for addresses without country in Preferences > Contacts.

And one more thing - contact “Quick Add” will now recognize most US addresses.

Phone Numbers

Cobook now supports a bunch of additional phone dialers including Dialectic, Vonage and pretty much any desktop dialer which can handle callto: or sip: URLs.

We’ve also made some significiant improvements to Google Voice integration - it now supports multiple phone numbers and explicit login (via Preferences > Accounts).

And if you have Messages Beta installed, Cobook will work with that as well - simply right click on a phone number or make Messages the default phone action in Preferences > Contacts.

Redesigned Contact Toolbar

It’s now much easier to distinguish between search and contact screens. And we’ve added shortcuts for the most popular tasks - make a quick call, send an email or refresh the contact.

More Enhancements

• Cobook can now associate Facebook profiles automatically by email (if you have your Facebook account connected with Update or Import mode).
• You can now click on a note to edit it even when not in Edit mode.
• Edit mode now lets you edit contacts directly in preview panel.
• Double click on contact image to change it or right-click for additional options.

All this is part of Cobook Beta 11. If you already have Cobook installed, simply check for updates via Preferences. Or you can download it now from cobookapp.com.

Google Voice is a really great service and we got many requests for integrating it into Cobook. So here it is.

Simply right click on a phone and select Dial with Google Voice:

Cobook will automatically initiate a call and ask for login if necessary. You can also set up Google Voice as the default phone action:

Google Voice integration is part of Beta 10, you can get it now from cobookapp.com.

Cobook has reached 50000 downloads and counting! Time for another tasty update.

Integration

Cobook is now fully compatible with the wonderful Alfred and Alarms applications.

Note: If you have been using earlier version of Cobook and want to enable Alfred support, please open Preferences and change default address book application to Address Book and then back to Cobook.

Contact Names

Beta 6 introduces support for contact middle names. You can enable it via Preferences -> Contacts.

We’ve also enhanced formating of contact names. Now it’s independent from the contact sorting mode.

Last but not least, the sorting order for non-latin alphabets is now working properly.

Tags

You can now rename existing tags as well as view contacts with no tags assigned.

We’ve also improved how tags are synced from social networks - they are now prefixed with the name of the network. In addition we’ve added special tags “#Facebook:Friends”, “#Twitter:Following” and “#LinkedIn:Connections”, that lets you quickly see everyone who you are connected with in the particular network.

Note: contact tags are synced gradually so it may take some time until all contacts display the current tags. You can also force syncing for particular contact by selecting “Refresh Contact” from the action menu.

Birthdays

Cobook now shows contact’s age instead of birth year. Also we’ve improved birthday synchronization with Facebook.

What’s Next

We’ve already introduced some big performance improvements but more are coming in the next update.

You can get Cobook Beta 6 today from cobookapp.com.

The feedback we received after releasing Beta 1 was phenomenal. Now it’s our time to return the favor. Cobook Beta 2 is now available with 73 new features, improvements and bug fixes!

Here are some of the most interesting.

Better synchronization control

After connection social network account you can now select whether to add profiles manually, add profiles automatically for existing contacts only or import all profiles.

Labels

Icons for phone numbers, emails, addresses and IM accounts now indicate label (home, work etc). Simply click on it to change.

Contact sorting

Contacts can now be sorted by either first name or last name. You can change the sorting mode via Preferences.

Better internationalization

Cobook now properly searches non-latin characters.

Regular window mode

Cobook window can now be detached from menu bar. Simply drag it away or uncheck Anchor to Menu Bar option in Cobooks action menu.

Tweak Cobook appearance

You can now hide contact previews and turn off automatic window resizing via Preferences.

Quickly find contacts with missing info

Special tags #no email and #no phone lets you view all contacts with missing info so you can update or remove them.

Select address book account (Lion only)

You can now select address book account which will be used by Cobook (General tab in Preferences dialog).

And more

• Cobook can now search in contact notes
• Deleted contacts are now not reimported during syncing
• Less aggressive profile matching logic to avoid incorrect associations

You can get Beta 2 now from cobookapp.com.

That’s how many times Cobook has been downloaded in the first week. We wanted to say big thank you to everyone who was part of it.

I’ll be honest, that kind of interest was rather unexpected. But that just makes us work harder to finally bring Mac users what they deserve - managing contacts with joy!