9 Feb 2014

Stop Google Contacts

Eighth post of my Stop Google series.

What is it?

Google Contacts is an online address book.

Alternatives

In my previous post about Google Calendar I talked about a nice standard for calendars, there is a very similar one for address books. Data use vCard format, and the protocol used is CardDAV (extension on WebDAV, itself an extension of HTTP).

Since CalDAV and CardDAV protocols are quite similar, it’s quite common that a server does both protocols.

• Servers:
  • DAViCal (check my DAViCal installation tutorial)
  • Radicale
  • ownCloud which is in fact embedding another server: SabreDAV
• Web clients:
  • CardDavMATE (a full JavaScript client)
  • ownCloud
  • CardDAV plugin for RoundCube (as the name says, it’s a plugin for the webmail client RoundCube)