(Hopefully) an Original Idea for a Hack

Personally, I would love to find a hack that could allow for the to creation of a unique telephone number. In doing so would allow multitudinous possibilities; specifically being allowing people to create musical phone tones. I don't mean the ringtones you hear when someone calls you. The series of tones that make up the ten digits on a phone keypad (0-9) each have a distinctive note and thus, various musical tunes can be created.

Now that we have technologies such as caller ID and cellphones, no one need remember the actual physical telephone number anymore. With one press of a button you can call a friend or family member while not even remembering the phone number you’ve just dialed. I feel that allowing people to design their own numbers would add a sense of excitement in the dialing process, especially if your contact’s number sounds like “Carry On Wayward Son” and so forth.

Of course in conjunction, there would need to be a hack that extends the length of the possible number of tones so there is no overlap of an existing number. Also, the number of tunes are slightly limited due to the nature of the pre-existing tones on the phone keypad. Therefore as part of the original hack, there could be a program that allows you to select the note each number represents. That way, the variety of tunes one can create is increased exponentially.

Obviously this hack would not change the world of telephoning. But it would definitely give a few igneous hackers a fun way to feel like they’ve surpassed the system.