I’ve been looking for a “tickler” app that would periodically remind me of people in my personal information cloud that I hadn’t pinged in a while, and help me to ping them.

Xobni did that a bit, I heard, but it was always a bit heavyweight for me.

Now there’s Contactually, a DC-based startup who snarfs up your contact and email databases and has you organize them into “buckets”.  Each bucket (e.g., “Peeps”) has a timeframe (e.g., 10 days) after which the contacts in that bucket start to “age”.  You are urged to ping your aging contacts, on the site and via email.  The software tracks when you have done so.

Neat, simple, elegant.  I’m a big fan after only a week of use.

(Full disclosure: I thought the company did some oafish marketing and “game mechanics”-style “engagement” that nearly brought me to blows with them, and almost got me to stop using the product.  But the product is terrific.  So, if, like me, you hate marketers getting in your shorts, please bear with it, because the product is worth it.)