Sometime in the past couple days, something really bad happened and I lost all but 2 entries in my Powerbook’s Address Book. Just me and Apple Computer. Thankfully, I could pull them off my Treo.

As I corrected a number of importing errors and generally cleaned up the address book, I thought about how many old addresses, bouncing emails, and disconnected phone number might be in contained. It’d be nice if the person owning that information could edit it as it changed and my address book would update accordingly.

Over at Linkedin I could download a vCard for all my contacts – with the self-entered information. That’s helpful once, not ongoing. And it only handles about 10% of my current contacts.

That being said, helping friends maintain current contact info is how social networks can actually be useful and not just “look how many friends I’ve collected” novelties.