The ubiquity of the cell phone has made communication easier than ever, allowing people to reach their friends and family on a whim though phone calls and text messaging. Unfortunately, many of us become especially motivated to use these powers in various states of intoxication, often resulting in incoherent or potentially offense messages to former flames, co-workers, and people with whom we haven’t spoken in half a decade. In the last few months we’ve seen a number of approaches to preventing this phenomenon, widely referred to as the ‘drunk dial’, and today sees the launch of a handful of new iPhone applications that may well be exactly what we’ve been looking for.
The two applications, dubbed ‘The Bad Decision Blocker‘ and ‘Don’t Dial!‘, prevent users from calling designated contacts for a set amount of time (anywhere from hours to days). By banning certain ‘trouble’ contacts before a night out, users can potentially avoid any embarrassing phone calls or text messages.
I tested The Bad Decision Blocker, and Don’t Dial! seems to work the same way. After selecting the contacts that you’re looking to ban, the application asks how long you’d like to keep yourself from calling them. Once you’ve finalized the time period, the application overwrites the data in your iPhone’s address book, making it impossible to recover until you relaunch The Bad Decision Blocker after the alloted time has passed. As far as I can tell there isn’t any easy way to circumvent the block (even deleting the application doesn’t work) – a necessity given the great lengths some intoxicated users will undoubtedly go to in attempts to recover the phone numbers.
One added feature that ‘Don’t Dial’ has is the ability to designate a friend as your phone’s guardian – only after they enter pre-determined password into the phone (presumably after you’ve sobered up) will you be able to start calling your blocked contacts again. This of course assumes that you trust your friends.
For those readers looking to take their Drunk Dialing to the next level, there’s Dudler, which allows you to shake your phone to call a random contact (you can choose to always ignore a few contacts, like your mother, but doesn’t that take the fun out of it?)
This is genius! I’ll definitely will be a user of this app.
I’ve got a much better version in the works. Glad to see Apple will approve these apps.
So It doesnt stop drunk dialing.
It stops drunk ‘contact dialing’
Are we so embedded into technology that we cant dial #’s manually anymore?
Sure, but how many phone numbers do most people memorize these days? 95% of the time you only see your contact’s name when you call them.
If you’re a stalky drunk, you’ll probably remember.
Good point. However, I don’t see a problem in designing a feature that precludes manual dail of the very same number(s).
the iPhone doesn’t allow background apps, so there’s no way to stop what the user enters when the program isn’t running.
How come of all the photos you could have selected, you couldn’t pick one with an actual iPhone?
Just kidding, I dont really care.
LOL !! Martin, that is an actual picture of Jason Kincaid. How foolish of me to have previously thought that Jason was a Black man
Ha, that isn’t me. But I did spend quite a while looking for a picture featuring an iPhone. No luck
Incidentally, a Google image search for ‘drunk dial’ gives some pretty weird results…
I agree
When I read news like these I always smile and rejoice that I was born in this era of technological advancement. I agree with you that “The ubiquity of the cell phone has made communication easier than ever, allowing people to reach their friends and family on a whim though phone calls and text messaging” Thank goodness for technology!
Jason,
If you reinstall BDB after deleting it, it should restore your previously blocked contacts. We put this feature in as a safeguard.
Dan Burcaw
Double Encore
I did a couple of searches and found a phone with a built-in breathalyzer:
“The LP4100 also allows users to set up the phone so on certain nights and after a certain time they do not call certain people in their phone book. Think ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend.
If you have a blood alcohol level over .08, the phone will not let you dial that person. So it not only promotes sobriety, but chastity — and probably your dignity, as well. ”
Wow… read : http://www.mart...0_cellphone.htm
Sorry, but I think the real solution to drunk dialing might be: http://www.aa.org.
Binge drinking and losing control of yourself does not equal cool in my book.
Does the app work for text messaging select contacts as well?
I dont think that it works if you have a text message string with that person already open. Sure there name is gone but the number is still there.
The Bad Decision Blocker does work with text messages. The app focuses around the contact’s profile remains when blocked, but one can’t access the phone numbers and email addresses.
http://itunes.a...235458&mt=8
Maybe an app that would prevent me from wet my pants?
Many alcoholics will appreciate this new feature. Maybe they could create an app where a user has to answer a math question prior to dialing/texting certain numbers on their contact list.
Maybe it is easier to drink that much, the one you call will not understand a word. Invest your $$$ into some beer instead on a lame app.
I wouldn’t count on an iPhone app to block these sorts of calls. I use LetsCallMe.com which lets people call me without knowing my number. Instead, LetsCallMe gives me a link address (url) that I can customize with descriptions, photo, e-mail address, etc.
The service tells me which of my links is being called from and I can then decide whether or not to take the call. I can easily set controls as to when people can call me, block specific numbers and even play a message to incoming callers BEFORE they are connected to me so I don’t tie up my phone or my voicemail.
The service is in Beta testing and accepting customers.
Nice post! Check out my website as well http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Thanks for the mention! I’m the Don’t Dial developer and just wanted to answer some questions.
Don’t Dial works by temporarily removing the contact information for the contacts you choose. It moves the phone numbers and email addresses into its own holding area and puts them back later. So even if you try to dial using your address book, it won’t work – it’s not like Don’t Dial has to be running all the time or that you have to dial through the app. It’ll block texting and emails too.
Currently, on the iPhone, there’s no way to prevent someone from dialing a number, so no app will be able to prevent dialing numbers you know by heart. Same thing with sms – no app can prevent you from texting a number, or from reading and replying to old texts. iPhone 3.0 might change that – we’re looking at it now, and if it does, we’ll release an update.
But it does work nicely in those drunk dial situations where you haven’t spoken to someone recently and don’t know their number by heart.
One last thing: we have a version for G1 too!
Has anyone seen the new kid on the block? Designated Dialer? Very similar to all these, but has one (and believe me grateful) difference. There is a little mini game that I can play to prove that I’m sober.
I don’t have to rely on another person and if I’m sober enough to finish the game I’m good enough to talk to someone without making a fool out of myself.
All of them work pretty good, but this one just gives me that little extra safe proofing that I like.