M Ridzwan

“Hello, you have reached Ridzwan’s mobile phone. The phone is ringing right now but I’m not answering it as I’m avoiding an annoying person. Please press 1 to leave me a message and if I don’t call you back, you’re the one.”

Privacy is now a rare commodity now that we have mobile phones. Wherever you are and whatever you do, you will be reached. Caller-ID on our mobile phone service is a useful innovation but if someone calls you from a public phone, how do you screen them?

Would it not be cool to sound like a large corporation and ask your caller to “Press 1 if you’re a friend and press 2 if you’re a colleague out to load me with work” Well, now you can.
Not many people realise this but you can convert your mobile phone into a mini call centre, complete with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. The application you need is the Interactive Voice Call Master.

The software which runs on Symbian phones feature an intuitive classification feature that lets you divide incoming callers into seven groups including callers on any five lists or phonebook, unidentified callers, and hidden callers (those who conceal phone number or call from a public phone). Then you can assign one of seven responses to each group. Possible responses include accept, interactive voice, busy tone, reject + send SMS, divert calls to, record conversation and mute the ringer.

If you chose IVR as a response to any group, it will answer callers of this group automatically and play an introduction greeting first, then wait callers to press keys to choose the possible actions, like transferring to other numbers or leaving a voice message. How’s that for sounding important?

Furthermore, IVR can play quizzes or interactive jokes with your specified friends when they are calling you! Or play a happy birthday tune to your girl or boy friend when he or she is calling on a birthday. That will be a lot cooler than a cheesy birthday message over the SMS. Interactive Voice Master is available at www.mobiosophy.com for a premium price of USD29 but a 30-day evaluation is available so do give it a try.

But not all of us would harbour the intention of sounding bureaucratic. If all you need is simple screening to block off that ex-girlfriend, perhaps a useful application for your mobile phone would be the BlackList.

It is basically an application that rejects calls once it detects unwanted numbers. The rejection will work on the basis of 2 types of rules that you will specify, namely the reject list and the accept list.

In reject list, you can define the list of correspondents you don’t want to answer. If this rule is activated and someone from this list is calling BlackList application will automatically decline this call. Instead if you were to activate the accept list, the phone will only accept calls from the list of correspondents that you have approved. If this rule is activated and you’re called by somebody not from this list of correspondents, the call will be automatically rejected.

BlackList is available for only USD9.95 with a 30-day evaluation period. It can be downloaded from www.symbianware.com