App keeps drunken users safe and sensible

The Drunk Mode app lets intoxicated users leave 'Breadcrumbs' via passive GPS, find drinking buddies and rides, and stops them from drunk dialing.

Drunk Mode is the app for anyone who ever wished their smartphone had a ‘Do Not Operate Under the Influence’ warning, which is probably most people at one time or another. Aimed at college kids, the app has been described by its creator Josh Anton as a ‘condom for your phone’, and contains numerous features that aim to keep users both safe and sensible when intoxicated.

First and foremost, the app offers a drunk dial blocker that hides select phone contacts for 12 hours, preventing inappropriate inebriated calls to ex-girlfriends. Next there is ‘Find My Drunk’ — this uses GPS to helps users locate drunken pals and ‘Find a Ride’, which can source a taxi home or offer walking direction to friends’ locations. Finally, for the morning after, ‘Breadcrumbs’ create a map of the user’s movements using passive GPS data, and lets users retrace their steps — whether to find a lost item, for peace of mind or simply to laugh at the ridiculously long route they took from party one to party two.

Drunk Mode will soon be integrating a number of extra safety features from Fabriq — a paid safety service that helps people prevent and respond to emergencies. These include a panic button that will text alerts to loved ones if the user finds themselves in a dangerous situation, and the ability to share the profile of a missing person with everyone in the network in a five mile radius.

Drunk Mode already has approximately 750,000 downloads to date. Are there other apps that could transform smartphones for different circumstances — such as a holiday mode that only lets users check their email once a day?