I'm on the verge of changing my mobile phone service provider. Because my existing biller is being awkward about the paperwork needed to transer the existing phone number, I may end up changing my number. I'll then have to figure out, by going though my address book, who has my phone number to let them know of the change.

The reverse address book feature of a mobile phone would add to the existing phone book when I call somoone. For every entry in the phone there would be a field for whether the person has my number, i.e. whether I need to give them the new one. So, friends would be in the reverse address book wheras the pizza place around the corner wouldn't be. Although I'd still need their phone number, they never call me. Not after the incident with the anchovies anyway. When calling a number for the first time, the phone could give you the option to add the person to your address book and possibly the reverse address book.

But wait! There's more. I use an integrated address book on my computer so that the my computer, PDA and phone (when I get around to upgrading it) all use the same address book. I therefore the reverse address book to deal with email addresses (multiple accounts), several phone numbers and my home address. A business contact might need to know when I get a new mobile but doesn't care when I move house. My friends don't care if I change my business email address but might want to know if I move house, change mobile number, personal email address or IM account.

So, in brief, (sorry, I have been rambling terribly) it's a set of fields in an address book that look after who I have contacted by what method so that I can tell them when somehting changes. Thank-you and goodnight.
-- st3f, Aug 10 2004

Bakable in address books that allow you to enter your own fields - or, for those that don't, if there's a field you don't use, but that you can search on, adopt it for this purpose.
-- zen_tom, Aug 16 2004


[zen_tom] - My understanding of the idea is that the address book automatically logs methods of contact with different people. You are suggesting a Manual method for Baking so in my opinion the idea still stands.

Croissant for you [st3f]
-- afrocelt, Aug 16 2004


Seems like it could be auto-populated, as long as you had logs of all your ingoing and outgoing contacts. For email that's pretty easy. In fact you could automate it in Outlook with an addin-- every time an incoming email's source address matched an address in your address book, mark it as a person you'd have to notify.

For phone numbers it would be a little trickier to automate, depending on your brand of phone. You'd need access to the "call log" of the phone, which on a good phone will contain both incoming and outgoing calls. If its a PalmOS or PocketPC phone that is synced with your computer, in theory this data is backed up on your computer somewhere. (Though it might be an undocumented format). After each sync it could be used to decorate address book entries appropriately.
-- krelnik, Aug 16 2004


I need something like this, too. Actually, I've been rolling around an idea in my head for this sort of thing for a while, but it's nice to know other people have thought about it, too.

I can think of all kinds of situations where something like this would be handy. On one end of the scale, there are contacts you might have given out to others as people who can reach you in the event of an emergency--what if one of them moves but you've forgotten to whom you've given their information? On the other end of the scale is more frivolous stuff like keeping track of all of the Web sites we're you've publicized that you're "single and looking," and suddenly you find that there's someone you want to marry. :-)
-- l2g, May 06 2005



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