I read a short article in Landmobile which talks about a new "globally-recognized" standard for emergency workers searching for next-of-kin contact information.



Now, I have to say I was never a fan of "ICE" in the first place - I can't see your average ambulance driver bothering when they have a patient to deal with, quite apart from the fact that they might not want to be seen to be "riffling through the victims pockets".

This new system doesn't seem to improve things either.

Adding a zero-based prefix to an existing contact is fine, but you'd need to rename "Joanne Bloggs" to "01 wife" which would be counter-intuitive when you're trying to dial them, which would happen much more often than a paramedic searching (hopefully!).

So, instead you could create a new contact called "01 wife", for example, with all the same information as "Joanne Bloggs". But now, when they send you a text or call you it appears to be from "01 wife" which isn't too confusing (again, hopefully!), but it's not the behaviour I want from my phone. On top of that, I now have 2 contacts to manage whenever the missus changes her phone numbers.

If they'd chosen a prefix which would put the new contact at the END of the ponebook list, instead of at the begining, it would solve the incoming call/message issue of a duplicate contact. That still leaves us to manage the duplicate info though.


I can see a lot of people doing this, but I can also see a lot of people who are heavy mobile users NOT doing it because, lets face it, it's a bodge. I don't think it matters that some will and some won't, but if universality is not important why bother with a new standard?

I still think, if it's serious enough to involve somebody examining your mobile in search of next of kin info, there are plenty of other places they can get information from that "they" would turn to first.

Any ambulance drivers, police men, firemen (or women) care to comment? Or perhaps anyone who's needed emergency aid in a foreign country (how long did they spend playing with your mobile?)

Aha, this might be a solution to the "duplicate contact number" issue:



Source

Well, they won't find anything from my phone because I set to have PIN lock!

Pointless...

Nor mine, because I use the worlds slowest HTC Touch - I'll have died before they get into Contacts

ICE seemed like such a good idea - until you tried it!

It was a kludge which is why it never took off.

I lost a phone once and got it back coz the person who found it found 'Mum' in my phone book. Probably easier to find and I think my partner would rather my mum did the panicing than her!

Of course, there is a really very easy way for us Windows Mobile Pro users to overcome all of the issues of the ICE debate

I just have my phone setup to display my owner info screen with the ICE information whenever you take the phone out of standby. That way the info appears every time the phone turns on, and always before my PIN number kicks in

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Yeah, that would work pretty well really....

P