Project to Improve Caller ID

[ajoburg]

I've been working on an app that does an enhanced caller ID for your calls. The basic idea is to know more about who's calling you:

1) what network they're calling from so you know whether or not you're paying for the call

2) the geographic region they're calling from

I'd love to know whether anyone thinks this is interesting and what else they might want to know about the incoming caller.

If you want to take a look at the app I've been working on it's free from http://market.android.com/details?id=com.jagoe.socialphone if you're on your Android phone. You can also get it from http://www.getjar.com/mobile/33828/openannie-caller-id/.

Any feedback would be great. The app has data for about 30 countries.

 

[DroidJnkie]

wow, this is a really cool idea! How about making the photos larger than the ones on standard Droid caller id? Those freaking pics are tiny

 

[UncleMike]

I like this idea. My previous phone (Moto v950) would display the state or province for both incoming and outgoing calls if there was no match in the contacts list. For me this was great because I often do service work where I have to call and check in or coordinate with off-site personnel. One time I unknowingly called Canada and didn't realize it until my bill arrived. Not so much a problem now with Google Voice, but still I miss the feature.

Does the app account for number portability when determining the carrier?

 

[ajoburg]

I like this idea. My previous phone (Moto v950) would display the state or province for both incoming and outgoing calls if there was no match in the contacts list. For me this was great because I often do service work where I have to call and check in or coordinate with off-site personnel. One time I unknowingly called Canada and didn't realize it until my bill arrived. Not so much a problem now with Google Voice, but still I miss the feature.

Does the app account for number portability when determining the carrier?

Thanks for the feedback. The app doesn't account for number portability yet other than the updates that are made through the OpenAnnie web site. I'm working on getting this information, as currently it is only available for a fee per lookup. I think this information should be freely available and am working on making it available.

I'm also thinking about a number of other useful pieces of information, like:

1) local time of the person you are calling (i.e. are you calling them at midnight or 4am and don't know it?)
2) latest status from various social services (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc) so you have some context for what this person is up to
3) More precise geo data of the person calling you
4) The ability to tag phone numbers (the way you tag web sites using delicious). This could help you identify marketers (someone else has tagged the number as spam) or for you to be able to sort through your contact list in multi-dimensions.

Let me know if any of these sound useful to folks...

 

[ajoburg]

I've just released an update to the free caller ID app I thought might be interesting to people.

http://market.android.com/details?id=com.jagoe.socialphone

In addition to region and carrier info, the new version allows you to tag calls/contacts and to see the tags that other people have left.

Caller ID information can be reviewed in a call log and you can view a tag cloud that shows popular tags for people in your address book or for people who have called you.

Would love feedback if anyone has ideas on how to improve the app.

 

[jzsean]

I forgot the name of the app and the company, but a developer was threatened a law suit for proving geographic information. Theres a thread on this site somewhere that discusses it.

edit: http://phandroid.com/2010/02/23/lawsuit-city-caller-id-application-pulled-from-market/

 

[jfbaro]

it sounds quite promising! Great job!