Centralizing address and phone.

I shifted my residence. There is a change in my residential address now and also my fixed line telephone number. I then had to update my new address and telephone number with:
1. My company
2. My mobile phone service provider
3. Insurance company
4. Another insurance company
5. My friends
6. My relatives
7. My passport
8. I had to cancel my voter's ID card and get a new one in my area
9. My bank
10. My another bank
11. My credit card provider
12. My home loan finance provider
13. etc,
14. etc....

My colleagues, who are bachelors, keep shifting their house every few years or so. I wonder how they manage all this. I asked them and they say the address is changed as and when the need arises.

What is necessary is maintaining a central database for addresses and telephone numbers. I control which service provider, friend, relative can see it. Of course, address for passport and other government related orgs can get it by default.

It should take care of permanent residence address, temporary address and office address. For telephone numbers I should be able to provide my fixed line number, my mobile number and mobile numbers of other members of my family. I should be able to link to my neighbour's, my friends, my colleagues and my relatives address and telephone number as well.

All the service providers can pull the address and telephone number from the database to contact me. In case of emergency, they can reach me through my neighbours, friends, colleagues or family members.

For security reasons, I should be able to control who can link to me (my address and/or phone numbers) and who all can see this data. I should be able to alter this info at any time. The telecom company should have the facility to verify this updates. For addresses, maybe the policy should be involved to verify.

There should also be a mechanism to prevent telemarketing callers from making those pestering calls.

Implementing this may not be very difficult compared to making entries for all existing people and educating everyone from using it....

Code For Freedom

Sun Microsystems has launched Code For Freedom contest for students in India. The above link has all the details about this contest. My earlier blog has some tips on how to contribute to OpenSolaris. This contest has four other open source projects: Project GlassFish, NetBeans, OpenPortal and Apache Derby. But I can't say much about these technologies as I work only in Solaris.

This is a good opportunity for the student community to build their knowledge and show their talent. It also a stepping stone for them to build their career.