XING creating a webservice...

You can get more information on there page: https://develop.xing.com/

Maybe the first step to a centralized address book?
At the moment a manage my contact's in Google Mail ( www.zehrer.net) is my private domain powered with all the Google services. But I have to update manual my contacts on Google.
Manage them on my Palm and sync my mobiles more or less automatically.
I just hate the situation.

Is it not possible to have a central system where I can hold all the information and all my gadgets :) are in sync. Mmm not simple. Each device has it's own philosophy and data model.

Lets start to collect some requirements ...

• One main "System"
• Source of all other Systems (e.g. Mail Client, Mobil, PDA, Other Portals).
• If they are available let the people update data
  
• Solve the sync/replication problems ( not again a deleted contact)
• Store the history
• interface to calendar ( I hate to forget birthdays ... see below)
• support tags/labels
• ...
  

Btw. Birthdays is it so complicated to have a field birthday in your contact and show them in a calendar? My Palm work fine with this. In Google ... no .. why? .. My Mobil .. no the field exists but not information in the calendar, please solve this in next versions of the software.

Will they even integrate an SSO service? (see here)