I used Python to automate generating a chronological email/sms/phone contact archive when a home renovation project went wrong. My builder made a bunch of mistakes, tried to fob me off with excuses, and then pretended everything was ok. This integrated log was invaluable in showing discrepancies between what he said at the time and what he subsequently claimed.
My Python script reads my Google Contacts csv extract to identify relevant people, the lxml library parses my mobile phone call and sms logs, the mailbox module reads my email inbox and Sent Items to extract relevant messages, PIL resizes attached images. Then I use docx to reassemble the results chronologically into a Word document suitable for submitting in court proceedings.
The resulting Word document is an intimidating 130 pages long. I have shown my builder enough excerpts for him to accept liability for most defects. I won a County Court judgment against him last week. Now for the financial settlement!
I thought about putting my script up on github, though haven't had time to scrub some personal information from the source code...
I would pay for this. The key is to start doing it at the very beginning, not just when things go south.
I know of a homeowner that informed his contractor(s) that he blogs daily about the progress of his renovation. The fear alone was sufficient to ensure that his project went smoothly. Plus if the contractors do a good job then they get free PR.
I use Google Voice and have often wanted pretty much the same thing.
If you could integrate that into an application (Google Contacts integrated message history with Email/SMS/Phone/GV message history) that I could run on my own device, I would pay money for that. I would only be interested if I could run it on my own though, eg specifically not as a third party service; privacy issues.
It's actually one of the first apps I always install after I discovered the hard way that Android used to delete corrupted SQLite databases and I lost the SMS DB on my phone.
My Python script reads my Google Contacts csv extract to identify relevant people, the lxml library parses my mobile phone call and sms logs, the mailbox module reads my email inbox and Sent Items to extract relevant messages, PIL resizes attached images. Then I use docx to reassemble the results chronologically into a Word document suitable for submitting in court proceedings.
The resulting Word document is an intimidating 130 pages long. I have shown my builder enough excerpts for him to accept liability for most defects. I won a County Court judgment against him last week. Now for the financial settlement!
I thought about putting my script up on github, though haven't had time to scrub some personal information from the source code...