Sync Faces From Facebook With OutSync

Plaxo has been testing a feature called Plaxo Pulse that allows users to match Facebook contacts to Pulse contacts, and then import contact data about the matches into Pulse.

Unfortunately, that broke the rules and those that were testing the new feature were banned (Robert Scoble among the few) from Facebook despite the risk: “We don’t know whether Facebook will try to shut us down (despite their increasing verbal support for the concepts of open-ness), so we want to let a few key folks have access to the functionality before we make it available to everyone.“

Although similar, a cool feature exist for us Facebook and Outlook users that probably won’t get you banned from Facebook.

OutSync is a little windows application that does just one thing - it grabs the photos from your Facebook contacts and synchronizes them with your contacts in Outlook. In their own words: “It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.The main benefit of OutSync is for Windows Mobile users. Updated contacts are automatically synced with Windows Mobile devices by Exchange server or ActiveSync. Thus new and fun photos appear during calls and other places where contacts are used.“

It’s not perfect - Facebook’s terms of use deny access to peoples actual contact details for privacy reasons, and you can get stuck with the ‘?’ icon for some of your contacts, but it is completely free and if you are sick of the default contact image then this is worth a look.

OutSync was written by Mel Sampat of the Windows Mobile developer team and you can see a short video of him demonstrating his neat program here.

Cons: The algorithm does not let you examine the Facebook and Outlook records side-by-side to make sure the matches are all correct, nor does it let you manually match records when it doesn’t pick up a correspondence. In addition to that, it is not a live sync — it won’t pick up new Facebook/Outlook matches until you run it again.

I like how everyone is trying to probe into Facebook to see just how far they are able to get without breaking terms, but this gives you a glimpse at how social networks should work together to make life so much easier. I am hoping that one day, Facebook will lift their terms just a little to allow my contacts to be automatically synced between my computer, Gmail, and my iPhone. Wishful thinking…

OutSync is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. It requires Outlook 2003 or 2007.