Citizen Scholar: Design & Responsibility » Blog Archive » Not another gratuitous iPhone article (or how I've planned ahead for Highrise/iPhone interaction without knowing it)

Not another gratuitous iPhone article (or how I've planned ahead for Highrise/iPhone interaction without knowing it)

Jun 28 2007 by Randy J. Hunt

37signals’ Highrise contact manager has become the scaffolding on which I build most of my daily interactions, both personal and business. Within days of creating an account I was putting the email-integration features to use. I’ve been using Mail Act-On to quickly forward emails and create tasks from Apple Mail when I’m at my desk.

On the go, however, I needed an equally easy answer. As of writing (June 28, 2007) I’m using a Nokia E61 with T-Mobile service. I can get descent load times on simple pages using Opera on the phone, but interacting with forms and heavy javascript seems unreliable, so I haven’t bothered trying to use Highrise through the browser.

Thankfully, Highrise’s email interfacing makes this dead simple: I just added address book entries for each of the Highrise email options (Dropbox, Task Today, Task Tomorrow, etc.). When I sync the phone with my address book, all of those “contacts” go into my phone, where I use them to start new emails and add to-dos while out and about.

It was just a few days ago as I was using Highrise to plan my iPhone purchase (see end of post), that I realized my mobile solution would work wonders on the iPhone (or admittedly, any email client) too. Since it syncs with address book just like my current phone and Highrise doesn’t care what device the mail comes from, I don’t have to do anything different. So, here’s how to set it up quickly and easily yourself:

Step 1
Grab this template vCard: HighriseTemplate.vcf

Step 2
Import it into your address book and replace “YourDropboxAddress” in each new contact’s email field with the string of numbers found in your Highrise email dropbox tab.

(you can also just open it in a text editor first and do a find-replace)

Step 3
Sync up your address book to your mobile device or iPhone and you’re ready to go.

But wait, you ask, isn’t this all a moot point since the iPhone has Safari and I could simply use Highrise there? It’s true, this may be an option, but I’ll still want to forward emails to the system or add to-dos that come to mind when I’m writing an email without switching over to the browser.

One last thing, Highrise has been helping me plan my transition away from T-Mobile and into AT&T service. Since I’m on a family plan and will continue that arrangement, with one iPhone and one non-iPhone, and with both numbers needing to be ported, I’ve had plenty of questions for customer service with both companies.

I created a case called Mobile Phone and have been documenting my calls with both customer service departments. (T-Mobile has a good why-you-shouldn’t-get-an-iPhone spiel that’s worth it’s wait in entertainment value.)

There it is, the start to a smooth transition into iPhone land tomorrow after 6pm.

If anyone has questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

UPDATE

#1 Nokia E61 (unlocked) for sale

#2 iPhone works like a charm. EDGE isn’t terribly slow here. Keyboard use is almost up to normal speed already.

#3 E61 sold, thanks for the contacts

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iDan Jun 30 2007 at 12:11 pm

Hey there,

I got the same talk from tmobile when I called to see how much it was to cancel my service. Well I canceled and couldn’t be more satisfied, in fact I’m typing this on my iPhone.

I can type like a champ as well!

– iDan

Randy J. Hunt Jun 30 2007 at 12:21 pm

same here, Dan. Typing on it now, and I haven\’t experienced any problems. Very happy I made this choice.

Apple Option Escape: Integrage Highrise with iPhone Jun 30 2007 at 2:11 pm

[...] Randy Hunt at Citizen Scholar has written a great tutorial for using Highrise with the iPhone. It’s a simple process that consists of importing a vCard template into Address Book and then synchronizing Address Book to the iPhone. We love it! [...]

Erik Huddleston Jul 01 2007 at 4:21 pm

Interesting thought on getting Highrise to integrate with your iphone. I’ve started down the path of moving entirely to web 2.0 apps from my trusty thick client suite. (I’m documenting it over at http://blog.2glue.com/productivity/) I have been planning it for a while, but refused to do it until the iPhone came out. Safari rocks. It is so usable. I demoted TMobile to my backup provider.

Randy J. Hunt Jul 02 2007 at 10:19 am

Awesome Erik, I’ve attempted the same, as much as possible, but there are still some things (namely the responsiveness of Mail and iCal) on my Mac that I haven’t gotten fast-enough experiences with web-based apps yet. When I can fire off an email with only keyboard strokes to switch apps, start, write and send messages, gmail just can’t compete yet.

ZRock Jarrod Jul 06 2007 at 11:24 am

Great tip – I’ve been using a smilar strategy on my Blackberry Pearl since Highrise was launched. I have address book entries for tasks today, tomorrow, this week, and later. My address book is sorted by first name, so I’ve named them A Task Today, A Task2 Tomorrow, A Task3 ThisWeek, and A Task4 Later. My task options are displayed above all of my contacts, enabling easy access to enter tasks without having to scroll through the address book, etc. 37 Signals Rocks!

Kyle Jul 12 2007 at 1:15 pm

I see a Plaxo tab in your Step 2 graphic—- what is that and how have you integrated Plaxo with Highrise?

Randy J. Hunt Jul 12 2007 at 2:27 pm

Kyle,
The Plaxo tab appears in Address Book on Mac when you install Plaxo. They have a little peak of the functionality on their site.

As for Highrise/Plaxo integration, I’m just holding out until Plaxo sync for Highrise is out of beta so I don’t have to deal with corrupted data. That’s going to really complete the loop for me. There is some mention of how the beta is working thus far in the Highrise Forum.

BlogTrage » Integrate Highrise with iPhone Jul 27 2007 at 1:57 am

Virtual Hosting Blog » The iPhone Development Roundup: 100 Apps, Tools, and Guides Oct 24 2007 at 7:59 am

[...] Highrise for the iPhone: Check out this tutorial to find out how to integrate 37 Signals’ Highrise app with your iPhone. [...]