Peter Griffin: Turn to Ringo when you’ve lost John, Paul and George

They've been trickling into my email inbox over the last couple of weeks - messages from friends telling me to look into something called Ringo.

At first I thought it was another one of those Japanese horror movies. Ringo turned out to be something a lot less frightening but entirely more useful - a free online contact book.

That doesn't sound very exciting, but after the administrative nightmare I've been through lately, it didn't take me long to sign up.

A problem syncing my handheld computer with the version of Microsoft Outlook I was using on my PC meant my mobile address book hadn't been backed up in a few months. Just the other day, the handheld crashed. Everything in its memory - photos, Word documents, text messages, phone numbers and addresses - vanished without trace.

It's easy enough to back up your address book on your PC and on a CD or flash memory card. But a sure-fire way to protect that type of information is to post it to an online contact manager like Ringo. The information is mirrored on computer servers around the world so it won't ever be lost entirely.

It's also accessible on any computer with a web browser and internet connection.

There have been a few services like this available for a while. In fact, Ringo itself has been around for a couple of years.

But it's only now starting to gain momentum. The technology is pretty basic, but for free online contact books to be of any use, they have to have critical mass. Your friends have to be able to see value in signing up to this online repository of information when you invite them to do so via email.

And the site must be able to quickly offer up the details of a friend, colleague or acquaintance when you need them. If Ringo is going to succeed it has to be the first place I think of for finding a phone number or email address.

I get the feeling that Ringo might just persuade the masses to join up.

It has that simplicity and single-mindedness that makes great web-based services.

All you do is log in through Ringo to access your existing webmail contact book.

The webmail address books of all the big mail providers are supported - Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail and Gmail. You're then given the option to send out a blanket email to everyone in the contact book, inviting them to join Ringo. You can also selectively pick contacts to invite.

Once they have signed up they have access to all your details - and you can see their details.

Simple and useful.

But there has to be something in it for Ringo, and therein rests my only reservation about the service - I'm not really sure what's in it for them.

My reckoning is that the small San Francisco-based team working on Ringo are betting on the fact that the service will take off and the Ringo brand will then be able to be used to sell premium and advertising-based services that will start the cash rolling in for them.

I don't think they'll do it with contact book services alone, but with the four big webmail providers integrated into Ringo, they've already got hundreds of millions of contacts as potential Ringo members.

It's a service worth checking out.