Googaby has released a collection of tools and capabilities designed to enhance Apple’s Address Book. Googaby (http://www.googaby.com) provides over 30 built-in filters that are conceptually similar to Address Book’s Groups, but that provide new capabilities.

Users can drag selected contacts from Googaby’s browser directly into spreadsheets; no export or import is required. The data that appears in the spreadsheet is fully customizable.

Examples of Googaby’s data related filters include “Invalid Email Addresses” and “Duplicates by Phone Number.” The software adds its own geographic and gender data to supply filters and tools that have never been available in Address Book. Googaby combines city name and zip code data from the US Post Office with metropolitan area data from the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Using this data allows Googaby to provide filters based on US metropolitan areas as well as valid addresses. It provides a look-up tool for both city names and zip codes.

Googaby also has a built-in database of 2,000 names that facilitates possible gender identification. Users can add their own names if Googaby isn’t strong in their culture. There’s an option to add the user’s custom names back into the software’s general database. Googaby provides filters based on the gender of a contact’s first name, as well as providing a means to directly assign a gender to each contact.

Googaby takes this filter concept one significant step further by providing full set operations on multiple selections. You can find the union or intersection of Groups, Smart Groups, and Googaby filters.

Googaby allows you to log in to your Facebook or LinkedIn account and then provides filters for each social graph — one for “In Address Book” and another for “Not in Address Book.” You can optionally use the contact’s image from either network.

There are also many other features. Googaby requires Mac OS X 10.6 and higher and is compatible with OS X 10.7 (“Lion”). It’s available exclusively in the Productivity category of the Mac App Store at the introductory price of US$14.99 .