Profile your contacts instantly

Vibe is an attempt to create an app which instantly retrieves the identity and profile of people online simply by searching for their name. The aim of Vibe is to put all the information you need to know about contacts right at your fingertips. On OS X, Vibe works from your Menu Bar. Simply sign-in and search for someone using their email address and Vibe will retrieve as much online data as possible about them. Sometimes it doesn’t retrieve data very accurately but since it’s still in Beta, this should improve.

Retrieves data from most major sites

When you access Vibe from the Menu bar, log-in and simply type the email address of the contact into the search field and Vibe instantly retrieves data for that person. The sites searched are the ones you’d expect such as Facebook, Twitter and Klout.

Vibe even searches older sites such as MySpace if the person has a profile. Vibe is also supposed to show a brief profile bio of the person you are searching but this only works in the case of people that are well known online, or that have lots of profiles online. Beyond that, Vibe doesn’t have any extra features although it does work as a Chrome extension too.

Accuracy isn’t great

Vibe is extremely easy to use although it is a bit confusing initially because it’s important to be aware that it does not install in the Dock – it goes straight into the Menu bar. To log-in, click on the Vibe icon and enter your username and password. You then simply enter an e-mail address and Vibe will reveal things such as their Facebook profile, Twitter account etc. The accuracy isn’t great. Some of the profiles revealed are of out-of-date MySpace pages or simply links to WordPress Gravatars. However, it depends on the person you are searching and this problem should improve when the final version is released.

An interesting way to find contact data

Vibe is an interesting project although until the accuracy increases, it’s better just to Google someone.