Several times a year, I see some kind of mass-message sent out on Facebook by someone who lost their mobile phone. They want all their friends to reply with their phone numbers, so they can populate their new phone’s address book. This should not be allowed to happen. Your service-provider should automatically backup the address book on your phone for you, so that if you ever lose your phone, your contacts can be put on your new phone before it’s even active.
Blaming the “lusers” who lose their phones really is wrong headed. Even though you can sync your phone’s address book with your computer, it’s too much work for people, especially if they aren’t technophiles. (Hell I don’t do it, and I’ve got my own website.) And I would argue that it’s not even worth the effort! Losing a phone is an infrequent event, and and it’s just too easy to rebuild a social contact list. Even the most technophobic can just ask a few friends for the digits of their common friends. Obviously things like Facebook, email, and google make this process even easier. (And if all else fails, you can start calling the most-common numbers on your phone bill…)
Besides, ever since the dawn of personal computing, it’s been clear that people will not pro-activly take the time to backup their data, even if it’s single most important thing they could do. Engineers need to design around human fallibility, instead of believing they can “educate” people who’ve got better things to do.
What makes this all so bad to me is that the technology to automatically and invisibly safeguard a person’s address book has been here for decades. Whenever a contact is added to an address book, the phone could automatically send an SMS back to the service provider, telling them the name and number of the new contact. The contents of the message would be encrypted for security and privacy. On receipt, the tellco would add this tiny chunk of information to the database they already have on the customer.
And I’m sure the engineers who actually build mobile phones for a living have better ideas for doing this.
And I’m sure the engineers who actually build mobile phones for a living have better ideas for doing this.
And then the actual companies don’t let it happen.
BTW I don’t respond to these facebook mailings, as a rule. My damn contact information is on my facebook page. Look at it you lazy bastards. Furthermore, I have all my contact info on my computer, which syncs to my phone. Bluetooth is ubiquitous now. It’s not terribly hard to do.
Comment by Jason Petersen — September 24, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
phone companies do it, but they’ll charge you $10 to do it and thats just each time you want to back it up.
they’re too busy raping people with charges to care about adding worthwhile services.
hell, it took a non-phone company to make internet on cell phones not suck donkey balls.
you’re wasting your fingers writing about a broken industry like that.
Comment by Anonymous — September 25, 2008 @ 8:51 am
It sounds like Microsoft is working on this problem, http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/159088/microsoft_leaks_skybox_mobile_storage_site.html
I count that as good news.
Comment by Vincent Gable — February 6, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
Well, looks like Microsoft screwed things up badly in the end, and destroyed many people’s contacts.
Unbelievably amateur hour from a company who makes “enterprise” their thing.
Comment by Vincent Gable — October 14, 2009 @ 8:06 pm