Patent ID: 7734577

Claim:
A method for managing contact records at a host computing device, where each contact record represents a single individual person and comprises contact fields for information about that person including a name field, one or more phone number fields, and address or email fields, the method comprising: executing on the host computing device a contacts synchronization system, the contacts synchronization system configured to allow devices storing contact records to connect with the host computing device and synchronize the contact records thereon with a data store on the host computing device, the contacts synchronization system storing a first set comprised of contact records, or links thereto, received from a first device that synchronized with the contacts synchronization system, and storing a second set comprised of contact records, or links thereto, received from a second device that synchronized with the contacts synchronization system; forming composite contact records from the first and second sets of contact records and storing the composite contact records in the data store, wherein a composite contact record comprises a composition of contact fields in a first contact record in the first set and contact fields in a second contact record in the second set, the first and second contact records both storing contact information about a same person, and storing information linking the composite contact record with the first and second contact records; displaying the composite contact record including its contact fields in a display area including a user interface element that allows a user to choose either the first or second device as a current selection, where when one of the devices is selected as the current selection, contact fields of the corresponding contact record are displayed with an appearance that distinguishes them from displayed contact fields corresponding to the unselected device, receiving user edits entered via the display area and modifying and storing the composite contact record accordingly, where the composite contact record is maintained such that user edits to contact fields common to the first and second contact records are propagated from the composite contact record to the first and second computing devices upon synchronization thereof with the contacts synchronization system, and user edits to contact fields in the composite record from the first contact record but not from the second contact record are propagated from the composite contact record upon synchronization to the first computing device but not the second computing device.