To keep it simple -

1) I use Thunderbird on a handful of computers to check my email. All of my email is server by my own server over IMAP. Is there anything *other* than LDAP that I can use to maintain a central address book which will integrate with all of the local and remote Thunderbird instances?

2) If LDAP is the only option, I've looked into it a bit over the past year, but never done anything because I was, honestly, baffled. Does anyone know of a good, *beginner's* reference to setting up an LDAP address book, or perhaps even a ready-to-use implementation?

Thanks,
Jason

You may find this to be of use: Addressbooks Synchronizer

It's what I use for keeping my address books synchronised between home and work. Certainly simpler than setting up LDAP.

I was really hoping to find something that could read/write from a central repository.... maybe I'll just have to do up a python script...