Remember when your address book was an actual book? Well, the days of keeping all of your contacts in a physical address book are long gone. These days your contacts are fragmented across multiple online services and devices. This makes managing your personal and professional relationships a difficult task. Luckily there’s Mingly, a startup out of San Francisco, who’s decided to tackle the personal relationship management problem head on.

Mingly is a relationship management tool that works directly inside your Gmail inbox, as a Google Chrome or Firefox plug-in. Think of it as a lighweight social CRM baked right into Gmail. Mingly helps you manage your social relationships by providing a consolidated view of your contacts, your communications with them, their important status updates, and their full contact information, all from within the Gmail interface you know and love.

It’s free and easy to get started using Mingly. First make sure you’re using either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. Also setup a Gmail or Google Apps account if you don’t already have one. From here, you’ll need to go to www.ming.ly, click the “Get Mingly!” button, then click “Sign Up With Google”. You’ll be presented with a Google security page that asks for permission to grant Mingly access to your Google account. Click the allow button to authorize and you’ll be directed to the Mingly welcome page.

Next, download and install the Mingly browser plug-in. Then navigate to your Gmail inbox and you’ll see the Mingly toolbar integrated into the interface. The final step is to authorize Mingly to connect to your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts. Click the “Mingly” menu, located in the top right of the page, select settings, then scroll down to the section titled “Social Networks” and authorize each account.

Now that the Mingly browser plugin is installed and configured, you can start communicating with your social networks directly from within Gmail. You’ll notice a new blue button labeled “Mingly Beta” in the top left of the page. Click this button to navigate to the tool’s main dashboard.

Here you’ll find consolidated streams of updates and messages from your connected social networks. Some of the most useful items to appear here are recent messages, birthdays, and career change announcements. You’ll also notice a section titled Reminders, which contains alerts you can set for a future time and date, that remind you to reach out to a particular person. By setting up recurring reminders on the people you’re trying to manage relationships with, you can remove the cognitive load of trying to remember and let Mingly remember for you. There’s another section titled Recently Added to Mingly Contacts, that displays recently added connections across your social networks.

One of the most powerful features of Mingly is the “My Contacts” page, which contains full contact information, social network links, and your communication history with a given person. When you click on a contact, you’ll be shown the Contact Snapshot panel, which displays recent news, updates, personal information, and functionality to get in touch with people using any of the social networks their connected on, all without leaving Gmail.

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Mingly can do. If, like most people today, you need a simpler way to manage your personal and professional relationships in one place, try Mingly for free.