TechCrunch recently wrote about a site called Skydeck, calling it “a very basic service that marries your address book to your cell phone bill so you can see your real social network based on who you call the most”.
Their article goes into other topics such as APIs, but I was mainly interested in the core service itself (for now - I always seem to get occupied by APIs). As it was a closed beta, I had to sign up and wait for an invite code. Thankfully they seem eager to get more people using it, as I had one the next day.
Once I was registered on their site and provided the details on how to access my cell phone’s online account (that data is stored in your browser and never given to Skydeck directly), the service began importing all of my wireless phone bills through a add-on I had to install in Firefox. Due to a glitch with the add-on, I was able to watch it go to each wireless bill and open it for reading and importing. While that was not their intention, it was interesting to see.
The add-on Skydeck installs is a toolbar. I was initially not happy about having another toolbar thrown in my face, but the data it provides could be potentially useful for the heavy cell phone users. I’ll never have a use for it since my cell phone tends to see more data useage, but here is a screenshot of my toolbar:
After all my wireless data was loaded, I was presented with a screen listing nearly every phone call I’ve ever made with my cell phone provider. According to them, I’ve spent a total of 8,192 minutes talking on the phone. I’m sure that’s a small number compared to cell phone addicts (like my sister).
I was also presented with a really nice search feature — something you don’t get from your wireless provider. Using their advanced search, I am able to query my call logs in a very precise manner ranging from name, incoming/outgoing call, call/sms, number dialed, date range, what bill it was on, call duration, and call charge. Doesn’t sound like they missed a thing.
Another extremely useful feature is the Address Book. If you don’t have one already on your computer or at another website (such as Plaxo), this will take time to build up. Thankfully I have the Address Book that my iPhone syncs to the OS X Address Book, so I just had to export that data as a vCard and import it directly into Skydeck. Their system automatically linked my incoming/outgoing calls with data from the address book I provided them and gave me additional data such as call volume to a specific number, whether you or your contact calls more often, and who you call the most often. Now I am not a heavy user of my cell phone, so my records indicate that I tend to call family most often, followed by my close friends. Below is a screenshot of call statistics for one of my contacts:
With all of the features that Skydeck provides, I can’t see this not taking off. There are other aspects to it that I haven’t had a chance to use yet such as the social networking portion, but I’m honestly content with what they have provided me so far!
By the way: I am interested in finding some people to test out the social network portion of Skydeck with. I appear to have the ability to send out invites to friends and family, so e-mail me: skyinvites at bradbutner dot net
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June 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
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