A few weeks ago I completely (by my own error) erased my contacts on my Mac, which erased all my mobileme contacts, which erased all my contacts on my iPhone...major #facepalm moment. In any case, through a combination of having backed up my contacts on Yahoo a couple of years ago, and by virtue of not having my iPod Touch connected to the network I did manage to retain the textual information for all my contacts. I just needed to update (and add to!) my Yahoo contacts and sync those back down to my mac...which would then sync with mobileme (and thus my iPhone).

I decided, this time around, that since MacOS Lion allows you to cross sync with Google and Yahoo, I ought to be syncing in multiple locations! The added benefit of Google is that it also looks at your contacts, and if they exist on their network it updates their photos - that is pretty cool!  The one issue is this: Once I started putting people into categories on my mac (Classmates, coworkers, etc.), I started getting duplication on Google, which in turn meant duplication on my Mac...which meant duplication on mobileme and my iPhone.... oh #facepalm.  I did already de-dupe things once on Google and once on my Mac, but they are duplicated again.  Luckily it's not that bad - it doesn't affect all my contacts, and the worst case scenario is having the same person in my addressbook three times.  I guess it's better to have some duplicates, rather than missing all you contacts, eh?