I don’t know about you but when I get an unexpected call from an unrecognized number, I usually don’t pick up. If it’s important, I reason to myself, they’ll leave a message and I can call them back. Nine times out of ten they don’t leave a message and I know to keep ignoring future calls from the same number.
But curiosity often gets the best of me and I sometimes google the phone number to try and find out who’s calling me. There are several websites where users can input the identity of mystery callers.
Why not remove that step and build it into a smartphone app? You could start with an initial database of known numbers and accept IDs from users to improve accuracy and expand the list.
Among my mystery callers lately:
- The University of Washington Alumni Association
- Dell Technical Support
- Go Daddy
- The American Red Cross
- Livermore Ford
- XM Radio
- Verizon Customer Support
It would be cool to have a Caller ID App that lets you know who’s calling as they’re calling so you can decide on the spot whether or not to take the call.
The app could be sold for a small fee, or made available for free and supported by ads. For example, if the app knows Go Daddy is calling me, they could show me relevant ads for domain renewals, hosting, or other offers.
What do you think? Is such an app technically feasible? Would you like to have it on your phone?