The mobile phone has become the most intimate (as in ‘of a very personal nature’) piece of electronics that you carry around all the time. People are more likely to do without many regular creature comforts before doing without their phone. Therefore, it’s not surprising that it is a great position to be a vehicle for something like personal social engineering.
You’ve heard of services that remind women of their monthly cycles, to help them get pregnant (or avoid it). You’ve heard of services that help you avoid embarrassing ‘drunk dialing‘. The latest, and this is out of NYU’s ITP from where a lot of other clever mobile social services have sprung, is a service called ‘The Popularity Dialer‘ that calls your phone to help you out of potential ‘situations’.
It’s like the classic business person who asks the assistant to page or call to make an excuse to escape a meeting. Only in this case, there is no human co-conspirator, you set up the call via the Web, then the service calls you with a canned conversation to prompt your responses.
Kinda funny. Go to their website and listen to the different recordings.
Link: Cell phone as social lifesaver – Business Filter – The Boston Globe.
Heading into a meeting in which you’ll wish you would get an urgent call on your cell phone to save you? Or maybe you just want to seem popular. Help is here. The Popularity Dialer offers a service that easily and credibly fakes a cell phone call.
They are donation supported – it costs them something to make the call. Hmm, I wonder if they use Skype or Gizmo to make the calls. Very cheap.
