Monday, June 2

Mashing up phone records with bank records?

So you mash up your phone records with your address books and what can you potentially get?

1. You could write a plugin for Outlook or use Gmail’s API to display the last time you spoke to someone [on the phone] when you bring up an email from them.

2. Or you could go further and create an app showing in one place the history of your email, IM, Skype, and cell phone conversations with all your contacts (the cell phone is the missing piece - all the other data is already accessible).

3. You could write an app displaying every call longer than one minute in iCal at the date and time it took place, so that [a record of] all your calls appear in the same place as your in-person meetings.

4. 37Signals could add a note to the Highrise page for every call you make to a contact tagged “Business” in Skydeck.

5. RescueTime could display all the hours you spend on the phone alongside the applications you use and the web sites you visit.

6. FreshBooks could break out calls with clients on invoices for their customers.

7. LinkedIn could use ranking data to show which of the five people that we both know is best placed to introduce you to me.

8. You could write an app to bring all this data back to your smartphone. We will target some phones ourselves, but we can’t address every platform and we won’t stop anyone from trying.

9. You could write an app showing which of your Facebook friends you text [or call] most often. (You’d have to match on name because Facebook doesn’t disclose email addresses etc., but that’s not so hard.) Or use our measure of reciprocity to poke the friends that never call you back.

10. You could throttle tweets to your cell phone based on how many text messages you have left in your plan. (We track how many minutes and text messages you have left each day).

Now imagine if you managed to mash up your bank transaction records into that mix (ignoring data protection and regulatory laws). NOW we are talking, because that will allow you to literally become a bank in your own right because you can lend money to people who you correspond more often. Or microcredit is easier as the banks can identify who you speak to most often. Or I can offer you goods based upon what your friends have purchased. Or I can see what kind of fashion or spending is common amongst your most common friends and tell you how or what to spend. Or I can warn you where you are not following good spending patterns... Interesting or what?

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