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

My suite-mate Ryan held up this week’s delivery of Businessweek. “Innovation” is the only word in their vocabulary.” I had to laugh. I’m sure a number of their readers, even occasional ones, have thought the same.

“Innovation” has always been a word I’ve struggled with. Long before the innovation-everything frenzy, I got all tripped up when I read a marketing piece from a large consulting firm that espoused design as innovation. I can’t argue with the sentiment. Design is innovative right? Creativity too? Innovation sounds so…good. Who wouldn’t want to be inventive and new?

The problem lies in this mapping of design (still a word that is difficult to define) to innovation (even more difficult to define). This is akin to stating that emotion is spirituality or thought is truth. Such metaphors are the fuel of theoretical exploration, for which admittedly I have a liking, but they are not for making a legitimate and coherent arguments in your firm’s self-promotion or much less in dominant business press.

In Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle he posits, “Innovation is ever present in the production of things. This is not true of consumption, which is never anything but more of the same.”

I’m not sure I get innovation. I get design.