Notices

you could just export them off their phones as a csv file and save that?
What type of phone do they have?

well i was looking to originally test it on my sons phone.

i was looking to :

connect usb cable from my phone to

blackberry
iphone
nokia
samsung
etc

then save them to a .csv file thats or to my phonebook.

hope thats clearer guys.


i do not wish to use bluetooth or any other method,
i do hope to make this available on the app store and such.

thanks guys pm me if interested i will escrow the money.

USB won't work like that on the N900 (at least until some hacks it). There's no host mode support.

With the exception of the iPhone, most others have mcrosd cards. Couldn't you use the equivalent of sneaker net? (Take their card and pop it in your phone?)

I can also see a case for a Google docs spreadsheet that you all can keep updated. That has the benefit of helping out everyone else in the family if their phone dies...

Terry

hmm any other way without bluetooth?

thanks for the reponses

How about if you just email the resulting list of numbers...

Emails, archaic they may be, are ubiquitous, simple and immortal...

well i was hoping to really have it saved in my contacts lists.

if we cant store it on my phone email would be good in spreadsheet if thats possible.

pm me your prices guys. i will escrow it once we decide how to do this i am so excited to do this app

you can email vcf

most phones can send one

Actually once I re-read the request, I'm wondering you had meant to pull data from another phone surreptitiously? As a parent of adult children, I might have been tempted when they were teens, so I'm not going to judge but it seems like a near impossible task without host mode, as mentioned above.

Beaming vcards should be possible with almost every phone but since there are many incompatible phone operating systems I'm guessing that there isn't a good way to do what you want.

Terry

Essentially, the only realistic way to accomplish this is going to be via bluetooth sending the contacts as vcards from the devices in question, as this is really the only ubiquitous generic format of transferring contact information around.
Using a spreadsheet via email would be an option, but you're still left with needing a way to get the contacts into a spreadsheetable format in the first place, and that's basically going to need several apps, one for each possible phone platform to transfer contacts from, and will require said app be installed on the phones to export the contacts.
Essentially, any single app to receive contacts will essentially just want to receive them in vcard format via bluetooth and store them into itself - Basically, a replacement of the n900's own contact system that's dedicated to "backed up" sets of contacts.
How easy that is I do not know, but frankly instead of having a dedicated application to receive the vcards and store them separately, your best bet is likely to be as festivalnut suggested, and just use mycontacts to bundle each set of "backed up" contacts into a group of their own.