iPhone App: Funambol brings Wireless Contact Management to the iPhone

If you have just bought the iPhone and are not too pleased at the fact that you have to manually enter and update contacts on it from your older phone or were looking to wirelessly sync contacts from Outlook, Yahoo, etc then you will like Funambol, an Open source messaging service that has recently released their Contact Management App for the iPhone.

Interestingly, Funambol is providing iPhone owners not one but two options i.e. an iPhone web app or a native iPhone application to always access and use up-to-date    contacts on their iPhones.

If you are inquisitive to know what Funambol means like I was when I first came across their iPhone App then you will find it interesting (courtesy their website):

"The name Funambol is derived from the Latin words funis (rope) and ambulare (walking), meaning a tightrope walker. Just as a tightrope walker must be strong, brave, vigilant and nimble to constantly adapt to changing conditions, Funambol continuously balances the needs of our open source community and the marketplace."

As mentioned earlier, one of the problems with with iPhone's contact management application is that you have to manually enter and update contacts on the iPhone and in order to sync contacts from Outlook, Yahoo etc you need to connect your iPhone to your computer to sync it via iTunes. If you have just bought the iPhone you will agree that the first option is not the most convenient options.

That's exactly what Funambol's Contact Management App for the iPhone is trying to address. Funambol enables iPhone users to do the following:

• Wirelessly sync contacts from other phones, over-the-air, to myFUNAMBOL. myFUNAMBOL would then contain the contacts from other phones.
• Wirelessly sync contacts from Outlook (or other e-mail clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird) to myFUNAMBOL.
• Access and use these contacts on the iPhone.

Interestingly, Funambol is providing iPhone owners not one but two options i.e. as an iPhone web app or as a native iPhone application to always access and use up-to-date    contacts on their iPhones; though functionality wise achieving the same objective as both methods use the myFUNAMBOL portal. The two ways are

1. Using your iPhone's Safari browser.
2. A native iPhone application which is available via the cool Installer app if you have JailBroken your iPhone.

As both methods do the same thing I guess the iPhone web app would be the more preferred option.