We are very excited to announce that Silentale for iPhone is now available for download in the App Store!

Why is this so cool? Well, if you’re already using Silentale, you know how powerful it is to be able to keep track of your contacts and conversations from wherever you are.

But most of all, Silentale for iPhone is the first application that automatically wraps all your contacts into one single interface. You get a 360° view of all your contacts, including the messages and attachments you’ve exchanged with them, consolidated across Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, multiple emails plus more, directly from your iPhone.

And it’s completely free.

So even if you’re out & about, the iPhone app will let you easily see what you’ve talked about with your network, and let you quickly choose how to contact them.

How it works

Get it now!

See? Silentale for iPhone is the smart way to carry everyone you communicate with, and all the conversations you’ve had, with you wherever you go. So go ahead and get it now from the App Store!

And once you’ve tried it out,  we’d love to hear how Silentale for iPhone helps you build stronger relationships with your network. Comment below or email us.

As of today, Silentale comes in two flavors, free and premium.

• Our “Starter” plan gives you the essentials of Silentale for free: unlimited backup of up to five accounts, including the import of 6 months of message history;

• Our “Pro”  and “Pro Plus” plans at $49 and $99/year allow you to track up to 10 or 20 accounts and import either 2 years worth or your complete message history.

All the plans & pricing details can be found on our website.

Introducing paid offers was a natural step forward for Silentale. From the beginning, we chose to be advertising-free, because the privacy and security of your data is paramount. And charging customers in a market where almost everything is for free can be pretty challenging… but recent events have reinforced how important it is for us to feel safe and comfortable about where our data is stored and how much control we have over it.

With Silentale, the answer is simple. Your archive is securely stored on Amazon Web Services, the leading provider of Cloud storage. Your data is never shared or made public. And we don’t ask you to connect with others. It’s your own personal backup of your contacts & conversations.

Our paid plans are comparable to other backup services in the market, even though we believe being able to access and search your archive whenever you want is a really valuable extra feature. But storing all those contacts & messages does have a price. We’ve tried to make our offer as attractive as possible by including a free option, and only charging customers who are storing the most data.

So signup now and try us out for free!

We’re happy to let you know that while we work on the finishing touches to launch our paid plans, there will be 2 more weeks to lock in a free account… until June 14th.

This means that your existing free account and everything you’ve imported and archived will remain in place, regardless of the number of services you’ve connected. We will not delete anything from your account.

We think our initial customers deserve to be grandfathered! Your account will continue to be free for as long as you’re with us. If you then decide to upgrade to one of our premium plans for additional features or to continue to add more services, it’s completely up to you.

Starting June 14, all new users can choose from the following plans:

• the Free Starter plan to connect 5 or less services & import 6 months of messages
• the $49/year Pro plan to track up to 10 services & import 2 years of messages
• the $99/year Pro Plus plan for up to 20 services & unlimited message import.

Launching our paid plans will allow us to cover the costs of storing all those messages & contacts, and we’re looking forward to becoming a “real” business.

So there’s still 2 weeks left to signup for Silentale and get your free account. If you have any friends who haven’t tried us out yet, tell them to sign up before June 14th while they can add & track as many services as they want for free.

Thanks to all our existing customers for their feedback & support!

From today, you can now securely connect your Gmail or Google Apps Mail accounts to Silentale using OAuth.

Until recently, whenever you wanted to access your Gmail or Google Apps Mail from a different device, website or application, you had to enter your username & password. This was a pain from a practical point of view, since you had to update everything every time you changed your login details. Plus a lot of people were uncomfortable sharing this private information.

OAuth allows you to authenticate external services without disclosing your password. It’s commonly used by Facebook and Twitter third-party apps. Silentale already lets you connect your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Highrise and Google Contacts via OAuth.

On the other hand, email services haven’t been really OAuth friendly… until recently. Which is ironic because your email account is probably the most important and the most sensitive of your communication services, and at the same time, the one you need to remotely access the most.

In fact, the absence of OAuth signin was preventing some of you from adding a Gmail or Google Apps Mail connector to your Silentale account, as explained by Nader:

“I didn’t like the fact that I had to give my username and password for gmail and live mail access. I did not do so, even though the wealth of my interactions are through email, and I will lose most of the benefits of silentale without them.”

Also, without OAuth, Google sometimes displays warnings about potential malicious access when our servers are importing your messages and contacts, which was a terrible user experience.

Asking for your credentials to connect your email to Silentale was as painful for us as for you, and it was really a relief when Google announced their OAuth support for emails.

So go right ahead and safely connect your Gmail or Google Apps Mail account:

Or update your existing connectors without disclosing your password!

And for all you developers out there, our team has released an open source Ruby gem so anyone can implement Gmail IMAP and STMP via OAuth for their services. More on our dev team’s blog.

Last but not least, Yahoo! also announced their new OAuth API for Yahoo Mail, so stay tuned for further announcements…

We’re super happy! Yesterday, we learned that we’ve been selected as a finalist for the App Star Awards, and it wasn’t an April’s fool joke!!!

After loads of requests from our users (and because we needed it too!), we have been working like crazy to build Silentale for iPhone. The app gives you an instant overview of all your contacts, plus their latest messages, when you’re on the go.

Although it’s not yet in the App Store, it will be shortly… we’re just putting the finishing touches to it. Make sure to have a Silentale account to be notified of it’s availability! In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak while you’re waiting…

Eager to have it on your mobile? Like what you see? Help us out by giving it the thumbs-up rating on video2.appsfire.com.

And for more on the Awards, check out yesterday’s post by ReadWriteWeb:

“The App Star Awards is a contest that highlights brilliant and innovative upcoming applications for the iPhone (and now the iPad, too).

Created by AppsFire, the service for sharing iPhone applications, the event draws submissions from all over the world.

This year’s group, for example, included over 80 unreleased applications from 20 different countries including Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Spain and Italy, in addition to the U.S.

The finalists, 33 in total, have been broken down into three main categories: “Games,” “Utility and Other,” and “Entertainment and Fun.” As part of the jury for this contest, we got a first look at some of the apps. Some early standouts are below.”

And Silentale for iPhone is the first finalist listed! We’re so proud!

Next up – the uber-jury reviews all the finalists to pick the winners, who will be announced on stage at 360iDev, the leading iPhone developer conference, on April 12th, in San Jose, CA. Wish us luck!

One of the great things about social networks vs. email is that you normally get a photo of your contacts alongside their messages. It just makes it that much easier to quickly recognise who you’re talking to.

But not all contact lists are created equal, some of them are missing a profile picture, either because people want to remain anonymous or they just didn’t upload a photo.

Some of your contacts also possess multiple online personas, using serious portaits on professional networks, fun shots on social networks, cartoons, corporate logos and even sometimes a scene from a holiday snap!

A sample of my Facebook friends... Guess who's who?

And avatars can frequently change for events or causes, like adding a pink ribbon for the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or turning green to show support for the Iranian protesters during the elections.

Choosing the best illustration to represent yourself has become a national sport, and you can find many articles on the net helping you avoid a taste mistake at best, and social suicide at worst, such as these posts on: How to Choose a Social Media Profile Picture and Avatar Importance.

Silentale builds your contacts’ profiles automatically from the people you’ve exchanged messages with, which means that in some cases, the profile pic initially retrieved is not always the one you’d most like to have in place. You don’t want to see your friend’s professional headshot, you’d rather have their smiling face from Facebook. Or you simply can’t stand someone’s avatar and have to change it.

Many of our users have requested the ability to choose the right photo from all the sources available to go along with the name.

So now you can! Simply select “Edit” on any contact and choose the “Change profile picture” option. All the various picture selections will be displayed, and you just click to choose your favorite.

It’s as easy as that! All your contacts, with the photos you choose.

Keep telling us what new features and functionality you’d like in Silentale by sending your feedback to support@silentale.com. We’re listening, so look out for more requested features coming soon!