Software that Fixes my Contact List Problem?

At last count I have at least 12 separate contact lists. There is one list each for Outlook, AIM, MSN Messenger, private Exchange IM, Orkut, Hotmail, MSN Groups, GotDotNet Workspaces, my blogroll, Outlook Express, my banks billpay services, and even my Xbox Live friends list!!!

If you are anything like me you know that there is a LOT of overlap between these lists. Meaning I had to enter a lot of duplicate information to link to and describe the same people over and over again. I have to open several different programs to send and receive information from all off these people. Each person is described differently within each service. For some people I have to remember their alias on at least 5 different services because they couldn’t get their preferred aliases with each service. I feel like I need a secretary just to keep all this information correct across services.

Give me one list to rule them all! Let me manage only one list. I don’t care who enables this. It could be longhorn with WinFS, it could be the Outlook team, or it could be some third party application. If you are able to make a good portion of the following scenarios a reality I’m wiling to pay good money for your software:

  • If I add a contact to AIM (or any other IM service) I want hotmail (or any other mail service I might use) to know it should let this person through to my inbox or straight to my other IM apps without a warning.
  • I want to have one IM program that merges all the names. Trillian IM put three of these lists into one app, but the constant service interruptions and lack of true merging forced me to delete it in a fit of frustration. When I send someone a message send it to their preferred service most likely to find them.
  • If I join a new community let me know who all of my current friends are that have already joined the community and link me to them within that community automatically.
  • Enable easy content sharing and collaboration with all of my contacts. You should subscribe me to their blogs and discussion posts automatically, alert me when they post new pictures to their yahoo groups share, and let me share documents, code snippets, and projects with the correct sub groups with ease.

Am I missing something? Is there software that does this already? What is your dream application that’s MIA?