Database Develop

Adding contact pictures to your phone from Facebook

Man, I wrote this tool ages ago. I completely forgot about it until I saw the other thread in this forum. Basically I wanted a way to get all my friend's facebook profile photos into my phone really easily.
Your phone syncs your contacts from your Gmail/Google. And Gmail supports contact pictures. I wrote an application that logs into your facebook, and finds any contacts that also exist in your Gmail account. If it finds a matching contact, it uploads that Facebook profile picture to your Gmail contact. And then those pictures show up on your phone! Pretty useful.
Usage (this application runs on your Windows PC):
0) Make sure you have .NET Framework 3.5. The application may crash otherwise.
1) Start the application and input your Gmail username and password.
2) The next screen will ask for your Facebook credentials.
3) Wait for it... Wait for it... Done! (The application will have finished syncing)
4) Wait some more... Your phone may take a while to sync the new images from Google's servers. But they'll get there eventually.
WARNING: This will replace any photos that may already be associated with your contact. Go ahead and modify the code if you don't want it to do that.
Download the Windows application and the source here:
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2008/10/synchronizing-google-and-facebook.html

Whoah dude! I can't use this (Mac!) but sounds great. I'm assuming you have all the API's down, have you considered building this as an Android app?

punkweakling said:
Whoah dude! I can't use this (Mac!) but sounds great. I'm assuming you have all the API's down, have you considered building this as an Android app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just run it on a Windows PC then. Nothing is actually stored on the PC; it's just syncing pictures between servers (Google/Facebook). I ran it once several months ago and haven't thought about it since.
Yeah, I've thought about making it an Android application, but I don't think it would be that useful. Contact management and syncing between two servers is done much easier on a PC, for both the user and a developer. I'm thinking about improving the application to allow syncing between Outlook, Facebook, and Google. That would be handy, but difficult to use on a phone. The results, however, would show up on your phone.

I must say, great little app. I've given up trying to add pictures to my contacts. Worked perfetly once I got Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 installed. I hope you really consider making this an Android App. I can guarantee that it'll get thousands of downloads in the first day.
For those of you who do note have Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, check out the link below.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en

this is very nice. i would love to use it.... if only i wasnt still using myspace... bleh

Facebook pics for gmail contacts...
worked great for me. Thanks!

If it is on Android, every time a new contact is added, the program searches for the profile image from Facebook or Linkedin. It might be cool. Is your source code under GPL? I am interested in converting your code into Java, so it can run on Android.

It's Creative Commons, not GPL. The application itself is less than 30 lines of code. It is just leveraging the .NET bindings to the Facebook and Google Data APIs.

So is this using phone numbers? Email addresses? Names? (to compare between Gmail and Facebook)?

momentarylapseofreason said:
So is this using phone numbers? Email addresses? Names? (to compare between Gmail and Facebook)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just names. The Facebook API does definitely does not give you access to the email address. And the version I was using (and this may have changed) also does not give you access to phone numbers.

Koush said:
Just names. The Facebook API does definitely does not give you access to the email address. And the version I was using (and this may have changed) also does not give you access to phone numbers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahh... ok. I have a lot of my friends listed by nicknames etc. I understand that the phone/emails are actually images (I assume to thwart off spammers with automated catchers).
It would be awesome if this wasn't the case though. I have been spending the last hour adding email addresses from Facebook contacts so I can add a picture to their name.

good app but i wish it sync'd contacts by name instead of email...
meaning if two names match, sync. even if i just have a phone number for that contact and not an email.
but good app.

cboy007 said:
good app but i wish it sync'd contacts by name instead of email...
meaning if two names match, sync. even if i just have a phone number for that contact and not an email.
but good app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, it only matches by name. You can't access emails or phone numbers through the Facebook API.

Koush said:
Actually, it only matches by name. You can't access emails or phone numbers through the Facebook API.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reading comprehension is not one of his strong points.

How can i change the way it matches? for example instead of names, i put my friends facebok id as "customer id" field on windows mobile outlook. and i want it to syncronize if they matches istead of names. this way there will be no confusion if names doesnt match because of a small difference. do you think it needs much work?

worked pretty well for me.. pic quality was a bit distorted on a few.. but what the hell.. they're photo's I didn't have before Thank You for a neat little app.

pixel-painter said:
worked pretty well for me.. pic quality was a bit distorted on a few.. but what the hell.. they're photo's I didn't have before Thank You for a neat little app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. Nice app, thanks

hate to bring back an old thread, but is there any plan to develop this for facebook/microsoft pic transfers? For those of us that don't have office, but use an @hotmail or @live, this would be great.
Thanks

It would be great if I could link the contacts to their Facebook account manually if their names do not match ^^.

There is also a facebook sync app on the market that works well for me. Hasn't missed a contact or had a false match for me.

Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Gtalk Contact picture syncing

Is there a way to select which service to use for a contact's picture. On my phone it seems to be twitter > gtalk > facebook. But I want to use the facebook pictures. any help?

I done know of a way to do it for all your contacts at once, but when you edit a contact you will see all available images for them and tapping on one of them will select it as their main pic.

PrawnPoBoy said:
I done know of a way to do it for all your contacts at once, but when you edit a contact you will see all available images for them and tapping on one of them will select it as their main pic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't seeing the pictures down at the bottom of the contact options, thanks

doalittledanse said:
I wasn't seeing the pictures down at the bottom of the contact options, thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy crap... I didn't know we could do that! So downloading the Twitter app and adding someone's Twitter username to their contact adds that pic as an option too?

Wish I could delete a post. Thought I was editing. :-\

uansari1 said:
Holy crap... I didn't know we could do that! So downloading the Twitter app and adding someone's Twitter username to their contact adds that pic as an option too?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, i think it might work off there name or email address associated with Twitter.

doalittledanse said:
Is there a way to select which service to use for a contact's picture. On my phone it seems to be twitter > gtalk > facebook. But I want to use the facebook pictures. any help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't work out of the box. You will need to use 'SyncMyPix' from the Play Store to retrieve and assign the pics.
PS: If you get a login / session invalid error in SyncMyPix, just logout once and login again -- it works then.

With Haxsync 2.3.0 you are able to sync HD images and select Facebook HD photos by default
Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk 2

[Q] Contacts

Hello, I'm a new owner (less than a week) of the Captivate and a newbie for android except for messing with the Backflip for a couple weeks. All of your guides have been great and I've been tweaking the heck of my captivate. I've even recovered from a near-bricking... scary but satisfying when I breathed life back into the phone. Currently I've got it rooted, OCed, new interface, etc.
However there's one aspect I'd really like to change that's bothering me. As you can guess from my subject it's the contact handling. I haven't seen any threads addressing it and hope someone can either help or point me towards a solution.
In a nutshell, contact handling is horrible. It makes me appreciate motoblur on the backflip... and I hate going backwards. I can't sync my google contact groups and the current implementation is acting strangely. I have it set up to only sync and ONLY display google contacts yet I'm getting an abbreviated list on the contacts tab. There's a lot of contacts that will only display if I click Groups->google. I have no idea why.
Are there any mods that will improve the display of contacts and handle the managing and syncing of google contact groups? Also, what folders will it sync if I enable contact sync with my exchange server? Will disabling sync remove the contacts if I don't like how they're being displayed?
Thanks.

I agree. The stock Contact app on this phone is garbage. The google groups are completely hosed on this app. No individual ringtones can be assigned unless you also create duplicates as phone contacts and then link them together. That is completely brain dead. Even if you do that, you still can't view the google group assigments. They are there, you just can't see them. Try to create a new group with the same name as one of your google groups that doesn't show. It will say it can't create it because it already exists. I'll say it again, the Contacts app on the Captivate is garbage. I haven't been able to find a replacement for it either. Anybody have some suggestions?

The closest thing I can find is an app called GroupU. It presents all of your google groups and changes made through it sync back to your google contacts. However it not integrated into he OS so it's a bit awkward to use.
Still looking for other options. Are there any phones out there that have better contact/google integration? If so, would it be possible to, say, backup that phones contacts.apk and restore it to the captivate? I don't think this would be possible (though I'd definitely try it if I had a different android phone) but I'm still knew to this and haven't gotten down to code level yet.
Anybody else have other options?

Raleran said:
In a nutshell, contact handling is horrible. It makes me appreciate motoblur on the backflip... and I hate going backwards. I can't sync my google contact groups and the current implementation is acting strangely. I have it set up to only sync and ONLY display google contacts yet I'm getting an abbreviated list on the contacts tab. There's a lot of contacts that will only display if I click Groups->google. I have no idea why.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Two things I can think of in response that might answer some of your questions/issues.
You are obviously aware that you can display contacts from a specific location as you described like "google contacts." For some reason the contacts app has default settings for certain apps. For example; only display contacts with phone number when you are in the dialer or only display contacts with email addresses when in the email app. I have noticed that this weird auto filtering has a tendency to block the contacts I want at the wrong time. I would try checking the filters and make sure its not just hiding what you want to see.
Secondly, I was annoyed with the poor handling of contact groups by the captivate. It seems that the phone will not sync the group placement of the contacts with gmail. From the reading I did, it seems this is a known issue and is being addressed. Google recently made changes to the contacts section online and I am assuming that we will see a change on next months update.
I hope this answers some questions. I have not tried any 3rd party contacts managers so I don't have a replacement suggestion. I got my filters straight and I don't mind waiting for a "groups" fix.

This is my wife's biggest gripe with her phone as well. The groups come through weird, and when she links two contacts together we can't seem to figure out how to set one as the default, so several contacts are showing up in her list as their Twitter username instead of their actual name.
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
I can't wait for somebody to write a vanilla ROM for the Captivate and get completely rid of touchwiz.

Another brain-dead feature of contact groups: if you do "send message" to a group, you're presented with a list of all the contacts in the group. None of the contacts in the group are selected, and there's no "select all" option; you have to go through and tap every member of the group.

Shovelhead84 said:
You are obviously aware that you can display contacts from a specific location as you described like "google contacts." For some reason the contacts app has default settings for certain apps. For example; only display contacts with phone number when you are in the dialer or only display contacts with email addresses when in the email app. I have noticed that this weird auto filtering has a tendency to block the contacts I want at the wrong time. I would try checking the filters and make sure its not just hiding what you want to see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm having this trouble with the default contact app. If I go to the "desktop" and start contacts I get a different listing on the contact tab then the groups->google tab. I've made sure that only google contacts are displaying (unselected google and made sure the contacts tab was blank). I don't see any filters except for the "only display contacts with phone numbers". Are there any others hidden somewhere?
Shovelhead84 said:
Secondly, I was annoyed with the poor handling of contact groups by the captivate. It seems that the phone will not sync the group placement of the contacts with gmail. From the reading I did, it seems this is a known issue and is being addressed. Google recently made changes to the contacts section online and I am assuming that we will see a change on next months update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that the groups are carried to the phone and they're synced in the background. I think that Touchwiz contacts just doesn't display them. Here's why I believe this... GroupU says in their description "Contacts GroupU integrates with built-in phonebook seamlessly." When I loaded it, it knew my labels I had set up in google contacts AND when I changed the assignment it synced back to my desktop.
I haven't seen anything on next months update... do you mean 2.2 will be released then?

Kiserai said:
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's the strange thing... I know someone with the original droid and they can't access groups either. Go figure.
I've never seen a vanilla ROM for android... so I have absolutely no clue what it looks like.

Raleran said:
I'm having this trouble with the default contact app. If I go to the "desktop" and start contacts I get a different listing on the contact tab then the groups->google tab. I've made sure that only google contacts are displaying (unselected google and made sure the contacts tab was blank). I don't see any filters except for the "only display contacts with phone numbers". Are there any others hidden somewhere?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would double check this but I just picked up my phone and it is dead. Not sure why but my battery is completely drained...I think you will see different filter options base on contact application launch. IE...dialer, email, messaging
Raleran said:
I haven't seen anything on next months update... do you mean 2.2 will be released then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We can only hope... here is one post on it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=754678

EX Dialer seems great
Kiserai said:
This is my wife's biggest gripe with her phone as well. The groups come through weird, and when she links two contacts together we can't seem to figure out how to set one as the default, so several contacts are showing up in her list as their Twitter username instead of their actual name.
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
I can't wait for somebody to write a vanilla ROM for the Captivate and get completely rid of touchwiz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off try EX Dialer, it seems fine, and I think it addresses your complaints.
Sendly any JB 4.2 release for your Cappy will astound you, most CM 10.1 based ROMs are really fine.
I like Captivating, though slim bean looks well supported.
Dosolutions

[SOLVED] Re-syncing Facebook contacts?

Somehow, I am not able to get to the screen where you choose to sync your facebook contacts like when you first get that after installing a rom/wiping data.
I can not add a facebook account through accounts and sync. Deleting all facebook data doesn't help it. Please help!

if you open the fb app and go into settings, there's an option to sync contacts
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

If you can't add an account, it might be because you used Froyo's method of app2sd. Move the app back to the "internal" memory and see if you can add an account back (you may need to reboot for it to show up in the account selection section).

baseballfanz said:
if you open the fb app and go into settings, there's an option to sync contacts
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope there isn't
Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk

I got the same problem with my Milestone 2 using Android 2.3.
baseballfanz said:
if you open the fb app and go into settings, there's an option to sync contacts
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no such option in my FB App either.
Is there a solution for re-syncing the contacts?

playdo said:
I got the same problem with my Milestone 2 using Android 2.3.
There is no such option in my FB App either.
Is there a solution for re-syncing the contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you check this?
bassmadrigal said:
If you can't add an account, it might be because you used Froyo's method of app2sd. Move the app back to the "internal" memory and see if you can add an account back (you may need to reboot for it to show up in the account selection section).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that isn't the case, you may not have enough freespace on the device to store any info...

That weird, for me when I go into settings and scroll down I have this.
but just follow bassmadrigal instructions above.

baseballfanz said:
That weird, for me when I go into settings and scroll down I have this.
but just follow bassmadrigal instructions above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was just the setting I didn't have. Don't worry anymore, though, I solved it by using an external application. Furthermore, I would just like to say I do not run ICS any longer. I currently run samuaz CM7 ROM and will continue using it until all the major bug and stability issues with the current ICS builds are ironed out.
ICS really is a great ROM and it's gonna be a tough choice between choosing an AOSP ICS build or a cyanogenmod AOSP ICS build. I really "dig" cyanogenmod so that's probably what I'll look forward to.

bassmadrigal said:
Did you check this?
If that isn't the case, you may not have enough freespace on the device to store any info...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't use app2sd or something like that. So I think the app is in the internal memory.
And my phone is just 3 days old so it should have enough space.
After deleting and adding my Fb account some of my contacts have re-synced but there are some missing

playdo said:
After deleting and adding my Fb account some of my contacts have re-synced but there are some missing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If just some aren't working, then overall, your app is working, it just isn't always able to find the right person to sync it with. Just find that facebook contact, then click on their picture to get the little popup with email and their contact card. Click on the contact card and select edit contact, then use the menu button and click on join. Find the contact in your normal contact and select that person. This will join the contacts.

bassmadrigal said:
If just some aren't working, then overall, your app is working, it just isn't always able to find the right person to sync it with. Just find that facebook contact, then click on their picture to get the little popup with email and their contact card. Click on the contact card and select edit contact, then use the menu button and click on join. Find the contact in your normal contact and select that person. This will join the contacts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry I didn't made it clear: There are some Fb contacts missing, not the link between my contacts and Fb.
So it isn't possible for me to link them, because they don't exist

Is this with the stock facebook app? Because I know if you use third-party ones like Friendcaster, if they blocked the app, they won't show up. If it is the stock app, I really don't know. I haven't seen that issue at all.

Help with contacts

I am having strange problem.. I have 2 or 3 contacts of the same name and email ID listed in my contacts .. donno why there is a duplication ..
may be it is one of the side effects of all the ROM changes
Can anyone tell me if there is any tool that will delete the duplicate contacts and merge similar contacts for once and all ??
I hate to see duplicates when am searching for a number...

You can "join" contacts together.
They might have done that because of different services/apps that sync contacts. I have that too. Like Facebook and Google. I just joined them together.

Hey there
its not because of changing rom, but because you may had updated contacts via google and facebook, as already stated that you can join contacts, as well as connect your mobile via kies and go to contacts and you can delete multiple contacts which wont have number...

andreww88 said:
You can "join" contacts together.
They might have done that because of different services/apps that sync contacts. I have that too. Like Facebook and Google. I just joined them together.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No .. I see the same name for 2 ppl for a sigle gmail ID...
Joining them is a pain as i have about 1500 contact :-D
bikelover1352 said:
its not because of changing rom, but because you may had updated contacts via google and facebook, as already stated that you can join contacts, as well as connect your mobile via kies and go to contacts and you can delete multiple contacts which wont have number...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i see multiple contacts withing google .. .Facebook and other stuff are different and i am ok to Join those contacts ...
deleting them in a pain as I need to look into each one and see if it is exactly the same as the other and then delete or join ..
Hence the need of a tool that can do the magic ..

Hey there
theres even an option to hide the contacts which dont have numbers!!!

Coolkriss said:
I am having strange problem.. I have 2 or 3 contacts of the same name and email ID listed in my contacts .. donno why there is a duplication ..
may be it is one of the side effects of all the ROM changes
Can anyone tell me if there is any tool that will delete the duplicate contacts and merge similar contacts for once and all ??
I hate to see duplicates when am searching for a number...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would be interested in that too, if someone can actually suggest a tool and not workarounds, as the OP asked.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA

Best and easiest solution is Download Go contacts EX from Play store for free.
Open Go contacts - menu- Merge - By name / by number / by Email...
That's It...

Coolkriss said:
I am having strange problem.. I have 2 or 3 contacts of the same name and email ID listed in my contacts .. donno why there is a duplication ..
may be it is one of the side effects of all the ROM changes
Can anyone tell me if there is any tool that will delete the duplicate contacts and merge similar contacts for once and all ??
I hate to see duplicates when am searching for a number...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this is what you need to do...go to your gmail account, better from your pc/laptop for quicker result. Under google logo, click on "gmail" and then choose "contacts", you'll be presented with contacts manager, now the word "gmail" have changed to "contacts", look further right you'll see a dropdown dialog called "more", click that and select "find and merge duplicates".
Click "thanks" if it helps you...

chintamanijaipuri said:
Best and easiest solution is Download Go contacts EX from Play store for free.
Open Go contacts - menu- Merge - By name / by number / by Email...
That's It...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I do this and then flash another ROM, will I get duplicates again?
djpianz said:
I think this is what you need to do...go to your gmail account, better from your pc/laptop for quicker result. Under google logo, click on "gmail" and then choose "contacts", you'll be presented with contacts manager, now the word "gmail" have changed to "contacts", look further right you'll see a dropdown dialog called "more", click that and select "find and merge duplicates".
Click "thanks" if it helps you...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This actually sounds good. Let me try this. Will it work if I go do that stuff from note or I should do it only from PC?
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA

Coolkriss said:
This actually sounds good. Let me try this. Will it work if I go do that stuff from note or I should do it only from PC?
Sent from my GT-N7000 using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Either way should work, but I prefer using my laptop screen as it's a lot bigger while fine tuning my contacts details.

I did that from my PC and swell.. it did merge a staggering 1500 contacts :-D ...
It looks much more neat now.. All i have to do now is merge the contact between FB and Google ..
Now comes the second interesting part.. once i join the FB and Gmail contacts ... lets say I wiped the data and moved to a custom ROM.. Will I have to join the contact again at that point ??

Coolkriss said:
I did that from my PC and swell.. it did merge a staggering 1500 contacts :-D ...
It looks much more neat now.. All i have to do now is merge the contact between FB and Google ..
Now comes the second interesting part.. once i join the FB and Gmail contacts ... lets say I wiped the data and moved to a custom ROM.. Will I have to join the contact again at that point ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you'll have to join the FB and Gmail contacts again, but that would not be much difficult as your phone will automatically suggest to join those contacts as long as they use same email address in both FB and Gmail.