Kids safe phone ideas

Published on Fri 07 Sep 2007 12:09 ( 2 years, 6 months ago)

Background & assumptions

· Cell phone is helpful for kids in primary school and allow to be used

· In some country (e.g. China, sorry to say but it’s true), cell phone is widely be used on fraud calls, spam SMS, pornographic message, which introduce problems for kid users

Basic Idea

· Run a program in cell phone (Windows Mobile, Symbian) to provide “kids safe” features, include:

o Limit out going numbers (e.g. only parents, teacher, emergency number allowed)

o Screen anonymous/unknown incoming calls/SMS (e.g. only incoming phone from parent, home allowed)

· Improve usability of cell phone to kids

o Simple UI for kids

o Disable unwanted features(setting, game, etc)

Features

· End user (kids)

o Outgoing filtering

o Incoming call screen

· Parent

o Setup allow list of income/outgoing call numbers (from cell phone)

o Remote setup allow list via SMS (advanced feature, for emergency situation)

· Advanced

o Send SMS alert when enter/leave Cell IDs (GPS unit is too expensive for kids phone, I think, Cell ID should just fine)

What’s for and what’s not for

· For Kids in primary school / NOT for older/teenagers

I am not along…

I did a quick search, and found it’s not a fresh topic and actually several some did similar and people have discussed on it a bit:

A Phone Safe Enough For The Kids? The cell-phone industry sees a hot new market, but critics are worried http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_25/b3989080.htm

DoCoMo unveils phone to keep kids safe

http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/11/010729.htm

Firefly Mobile – Just for kids! (This is an Irish local company, doing exactly what I am saying)

http://www.fireflymobile.ie/

An irish kids safe mobile phone:

http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2007/08/18/kid-safe-mobile/

http://www.fireflymobile.ie/about%20page.htm