Few resources on your computer are more valuable to your worklife than your list of contacts. Unfortunately, contacts are also among the most difficult assets to maintain.

Recently, a reader named Alan posed this question:

I and my two associates use Microsoft Outlook for our sales contacts. Right now we maintain three separate contact databases. We would like to merge our databases into one that all three of us can access, modify, and update as necessary. Is there a process/software you can recommend to accomplish this?

If you don't mind the manual approach, Outlook lets you export your contacts as a PST file that your co-workers can import to their Outlook accounts. Each user still has his own separate contact list that other users can access from their Outlook profile, so there's no real syncing going on.

Of course, the changes each person makes to his contact list won't be apparent to the other users until the PST file has been re-exported with the updated information and then re-imported by each of the other users. Automatically synching a single contact list among multiple Outlook users (without an Exchange server, of course) requires a program such as 4Team's $35 ShareO, which is available in a limited-function 14-day free trial version.

ShareO lets you share and sync any Outlook folder without using an Exchange server. The program works with all ve... [Read more]

(Credit: Microsoft)

After announcing its intentions to do so a few weeks ago, Microsoft today launches its official SkyDrive app for Android devices. Similar to its sibling apps on Windows Phone and iOS, this newest release lets users access their SkyDrive cloud storage accounts from devices running Google's mobile operating system. While it was designed specifically with Android 4.0 in mind, the app is said to be fully functional with devices running Android 2.3 and above.

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From the looks of it, SkyDrive for Android covers all the basics, letting you view personal documents, shared documents, and recently used documents. You can also manage your files, share files, and even add photos or videos to your SkyDrive account, directly from your Android device's gallery. What's more, you can open your SkyDrive files from other installed Android apps.

... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET)

iPhone users are always looking for ways to show off their photos and make them look fancier than they really are. Whether it's through Instagram, Hipstamatic, or one of the various frame apps. Well, I have a new app for you to try. It's an app trying to make it easy for iPhone users to create a collage in a matter of minutes.

Mixel (free)Apple iPhone 4S - 16GB - white (Verizon Wireless), a recent addition to the App Store, allows you to quickly make a collage out of photos stored on your iPhone, or imported photos from Instagram and Facebook.

Making a collage is easy:

• Tap on the + sign
• Select the source of your photos
• Choose up to 16 photos
• Let Mixel do the rest

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET)

Of course, if you're unhappy with the layout you can tap on Shuffle or rearrange the photos yourself. There are also a total of six themes you can choose from, each with its own look and feel to it.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET)

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This chart shows memory leak management test results comparing how Firefox 14 and Firefox 15 handle memory after 150 tabs have been closed. Yes, 150.

(Credit: Mozilla)

As with many tech code-names, MemShrink doesn't sound particularly exciting. And yet, the memory leak-managing project at Mozilla finally sees some of its biggest changes reach the vast majority of people using Firefox with today's major update.

Mozilla expects that the new Firefox 15 for PCs (download for Windows | Mac | Linux) finally will put an end to the multitude of memory-managing issues that have plagued Firefox for years. As we noted in July when Firefox 15 went beta, the MemShrink project has spent much of its time fixing how the browser handles add-ons that contribute to memory problems. A "memory leak" is when a program destabilizes itself after grabbing memory to use for a task, but then unsuccessfully or improperly releases that memory after the task is done. Firefox engineers claimed that the br... [Read more]