A few tips to synchronize contacts between iOS, MacOS, Gmail and Outlook.
- Use Google as a common thread across platforms and devices
- GOSyncMod is a standalone utility on Windows to synchronize contacts between Outlook and Gmail.
- On iOS and MacOS, use a CardDAV account to synchronize your contact with Google.
Once all lists are in sync with Google Contacts, these tools can help with clean up and merging of your contacts:
- Google Contacts has a built-in utility to merge duplicates
- On iOS, the MultiEdit Contact Manager app has nice features to merge duplicates, import details from Facebook, and update missing fields such as email address and birth-dates.
Finally, to actually use your contacts list more efficiently than wha tthe default apps allow:
- Brewster is an iOS app that links up contact information from multiple social networks and turns your contact list into a visual mosaic of faces. It also identifies trends and notifies you of changes in your contacts.
- Another possibility I tried is Smartr for iPhone (from Xobni), which provides similar features as Brewster but felt a little less useful (relies a lot more on search as opposed to browsing contacts).
- I will give Cobook a try as well, as it is available as a replacement of the default Contacts application for both iOS and MacOS.