Zap's Hitta

[2.0.0] Name&Place search. I suddenly got a LOT of feedback so I finally wrapped up a search function. Just press the Search key and enter a name and a place separated by a comma (say "Nisse Hult, Skövde") and you will see a list of matches separated into people, companies and places. Press and hold an item to select whether to call, save to contacts or show on map (if possible).

[1.9.50] Quicker and more stable Contacts lookup. Finally got around to fixing a two long standing bug in the Contacts lookup code and optimizing it. As I've had no real feedback at all (though statistics seem to indicate the applicstion is till used quite a lot) I still have no idea whether to put any more effort into for instance an interactive lookup function, map or similar. Hence, I've added a dummy button that instead prepares mail where you as a user easily can append your opinions. Please use it if you care!

[1.9.11] Sorry about the long delay between updates. Lots of things have happened with my other Android apps, and altough I had a plan for this one too, various things didn't come out quite the way I hoped. Basically it kept working good enough, although the more recent versions of Android got more aggressive in restarting the service which sometimes triggered a bug.

Improvements: The good news is that in the current release (1.9.9) restarting should be a lot better. The reverse lookups (on incoming calls) should be quicker too (now blessed by Hitta.se themselves instead of my original wap workaround). Saving to Contacts is now optional (and turned OFF by default). The icon looks better too (thanks Ron).

However, there is plenty that COULD be done about the manual lookup, searching etc. (And I've more or less disabled Austrian support since that site changes every now and then.) Also, 2.x allows a lot more complex Contact use. The question is: you who still use this poor old app, what features are you after? Please let me know - as you might have guessed, I'm reasonably happy with how it works already...

[Original message follows]

I hacked this app up because I really like the services at Hitta.se. I'm no more involved than that I've been a very happy user and several years ago I was part of making a Symbian app which had the base for a simpler version of this. I hope nobody minds me using the logo. I've offered to make this official (like their own iPhone one) but never got any response.

Basically, this app will do a few separate things that I hope you find useful:

Primarily, this app will trigger on incoming calls and show a little message ("Toast") with information about the caller that it finds on the hitta.se site (or equivalent).
If the phone number is not already in your phone book, it will be added, using the phone number as "HOME", plus the name and address from Hitta.se.
A side effect of this is that it will also show up in your Call log. These functions sum up to that as long as your (Swedish or Austrian) friends are registered (most are) you can just ask them to call you and your Android phone will automatically put their names, phone numbers and addresses in the phone book. Merging entries and editing is up to you. All this is managed by a background service that should start auto-magically.
If you already have a lot of phone numbers, but would like to spice them up with addresses too, you can use the GUI that pops up when you tap the icon. It will list all entries of your phone book and let you tap each phone number. If you do, and there is a suitable entry at Hitta.se, it will create a corresponding address for that phone number using a similar label. For Work/Home numbers it will also add the "name" part from the service as organization.

NOTE: When you use the GUI to get a lot of addresses into your phone book you will (obviously) trigger the Gmail contact sync. The expandable list of Contacts/Numbers will also automatically update itself when the database is updated - you will not see any actual difference, but it still takes a bit of time. If you have a lot of contacts (I have) and these two things happen simultaneously the application may seem to hang for a little while and you may need to press the "WAIT" button. Not sure how to work around this, sorry. Ideas are very welcome! Ugly workaround: turn off Contact sync while you do your initial tuneup of all your entries.

I mainly did this for myself and to play around with Android, but I hope you like it too. Let me know if you do.

The main feature I'd like to add now is similar services for every country - drop me a line if you know of a public service that can be used in a similar way (preferably without heaps of hand-tailored parsing).

As of 1.3.0 Austria is also supported through Herold - thanks David H. for the tip and testing!

1.4.0 will not lookup incoming numbers that already exist in your phonebook - instead it just shows the extra data (if found). This speeds up the process for most incoming calls. Another feature is that for "Work" and "Home" numbers, it will save the "name" part from the service as an "Organization" - the effect of this is that your phonebook will contain company name+address for your friends (can be useful) as well as spouse/parents' names+address for home numbers - at least for me this is very helpful when it comes to class mates of my kids.

It would be nice to also use Birthday.se to integrate with the Calendar, but I may hold that off until there is a true birthday field in Contacts.

See also my other app "Prisjakt" available on Android Market.

Best / Jonas