3 Jul

A way to keep track and in touch

In reading my usual digest of RSS feeds, I came across Merlin Mann's "I could totally use this" and then the source lazy contact manager - I figured it wouldn't be too hard to write, albeit roughly - and I would also find it useful.

So, I've written a widget (because I have no idea where to start on an Object-C app...) that lets you know which of your friends or contacts you've not been in touch with since a specified cut off time.

Download the widget (but it may require some Perl modules, outlined below)

The guts of the widget is written in Perl, and there's some specific modules you'll need to install if you want to use this.

Installing CPAN modules

Download DBI.

To install run the following in the Terminal app:

sudo su -
tar -zvf DBI-xxx.tar
cd DBI-xxx/
perl Makefile.pl
make && make install

Download DBD::SQLite

sudo su -
tar -zvf DBD-SQLite-xxx.tar
cd DBD-SQLite-xxx/
perl Makefile.pl
make && make install

Get the widget

With those modules installed you can download the Ketchup Widget^†

† Ketchup...like 'catch-up'...

It should flip to the backside of the widget to start with. Enter the list of email addresses, comma or space separated, as you like, and then enter the cut off period in hours, days, months, etc.

If anyone can do a better job of the widget design, or even take the Perl code and port it to an Cocoa plugin I would be happy to hear from you.

You should follow me on Twitter here I'll tweet about JavaScript, HTML 5 and other such gems (amongst usual tweet-splurges)

10 Responses to “A way to keep track and in touch”

Featured links for July 4th | 43 Folders July 4th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

[...] A way to keep track and in touch - Dashboard widget to keep track of friends you haven’t emailed in a while. [...]
Filip Salomonsson July 4th, 2007 at 3:45 pm

Beautiful.
syahid ali July 5th, 2007 at 10:59 am

that is a very good tool! makes me remembers some of the friends i used to have.
Dave M July 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

Check out the LinkedIn Dashboard for Outlook. It does all this already!
Update on “Someone please build this!” « Mind? What mind? July 8th, 2007 at 1:58 am

[...] me know that I hadn’t been in touch with people for a while. Now, I found that Remy Sharp did something about it, at least for the Mac. I’d still love to see this for the [...]
geter602 August 5th, 2007 at 10:13 pm

Hi,
I do like an idea of your widget - but my lack of programmer's knowledge prevents to use it. So sorry for clumsy question - but how can I instal needed modules in more ... normal user way? I don't know even I have perl installed?
Stuarts Blog » Blog Archive » Featured links for July 4th August 21st, 2007 at 8:59 pm

[...] A way to keep track and in touch - Dashboard widget to keep track of friends you haven’t emailed in a while. [...]
Scott Andrew - lo-fi acoustic pop superhero! > wordpress > archives > 2007 > 08 > lazy contact manager August 27th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

[...] ago drew some interesting comments. Since then, Remy Sharp ran with the idea and whipped up a Dashboard widget for OS X. And recently Zuzzana started a Lazy Contact Manager blog to collect “requirements [...]
Introduction to using Dashcode September 16th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

[...] your needs. Using these commands I’ve recently been able to create a widget that queries Mail’s SQLite’s database via Perl. It was a case of running the system method and capturing the output (and in my case, [...]
Jay Godse June 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

This is a good idea, even if it already exists in LinkedIn. If you need to complement this page with SQLite resources, check out my page at http://www.squidoo.com/sqlitehammer.