I work for a small company that uses mainly Gmail with Rapportive for managing contacts and other stuff. What do use for this purpose? Ideally, something that got python library to extend it further.
As ever, the answer is some variant on 'depends what you want to do with it'. If it's sales, something like Pipedrive, which returns JSON from their API will work well with Python. If it's more general contacts, I've also used Highrise (the 37 signals one), which has pretty crappy security/user permissions, but is nice to use, and Insight.ly, which is reasonably extensible as well, which I mainly use as a contact book/repository for conversations with people I meet. THe others can be used like that, but I found inslightly a bit better for multiple non-technical users.
Thanks. I don't need sales. All I need, essentially, is database with nice UI that allow extension and got API. I don't mind spending money if I can avoid reinventing the wheel. We tried streak.com, but it's too sales oriented and ppl didn't like how it messed up their inbox.
I"d be interested to hear what you ended up with - doubly interested in it if it does have its own python library...
Mostly they end up across a variety of clients in my Mac and as I use spotlight and notice them in emails/messages add them where needed. Not ideal, but I haven't put much thought into it. Email/cell/IM/linked in contacts come in where they will. I prefer something algorithmic like Spotlight to surface them for me in near term searches...
I use Apple's Contact app. Both on Mac and iPhones. They're iCloud and nicely integrated along their apps.