I’ve recently been moving to using both Google Contacts and Google Calendar as my main storage for appointments and “address book” information.

For anyone contemplating this move, I must say my experience with these applications has been (for the most part) really positive. I really like the way google maps integrates with the contact addresses.

However, I did come accross something unusual recently.

I noticed that some of my contacts had an image next to them.

Mandy probably added the pictures, and they also appeared on my windows mobile “smart phone”.

OK, but, the main contact number for Computer Aid didn’t have a picture… Hey, I’ll just add the picture myself.

But when I get into google contacts, the entry for Computer Aid has no way of adding a picture… Strange.

I look through other contacts, and I see something even stranger: some contacts have an “Add a picture” link, while others don’t.

How do I add a picture to a contact, when there is no “add a picture” link?

Luckily, I have over 100 contacts (mostly Computer Aid customers), so I soon noticed a pattern:

I could only add pictures if the contact had an email eddress

Even a non-valid email address, meant that I could then add a picture.

The question then becomes: why?