I can be happy in my ignorance ...
... as they haven't made an Android version.
The NHS has released an iPhone app that counts your units and lets you know when you're drunk, if the blurred vision and falling over isn't enough of a hint. iPhone users can get the NHS Drinks Tracker from iTunes for free, and the National Health Service also provides Windows and Mac versions for those drinking heavily at …
This app is fatally flawed - not only does it not allow trendy Notting Hill media types to record their cocktail intake, it also doesn't support all the traditional old man drinks such as beer - I couldn't get it record 10 bottles of 32% proof "Tactical Nuclear Penguin".
You have to wonder what the peeps at NHS Choices were drinking in their "research" phase - quite clearly it wasn't enough.
How long before some Home Office bright spark decides to send the data you record about your drinking to the police... (they've already decided privacy is dead).
They could send the GPS location too perhaps, or the rozzers could simply demand that from the telephone logs. Match it to public locations, then go arrest people for drunk and disorderly as reported by their own iPhones.
Yuck.
Even without that, I don't think it's wise to enter it, if there's a problem, the police can seize the iPhone, and use the recorded drinks as evidence of drunkeness to pad the case. Or use the presence of the app on your iPhone to suggest that you are a lush..
When I was happily mis-spending my youth, the rule of thumb was, if you can't remember what you've had, you've had enough.
I suppose this is going to make the modern equivalent, if you can't hit the keys of your mobile phone, you've had enough. You mean you /really/ need an app for that?
(And what other icon could I use?)
...have a button to randomly send the results to everyone in your address book?
Seriously though, it looks like the programmers are girly wine drinkers eho are only any good at algorithms and not databases, since it's just a really simple ratio comparisson programme. Now if they added all the major brands of drinks (Beers & Spirits mostly, the current setup is probably OK for wines) then it'd be more usefull (and interesting - was that carleburp or curling I just drank.....)
The only other drawback is that it doesn't know when one of your 'mates' adds a little something extra to your glass.
Seriously where do the people whom make these applications get the time?
I don't see the point in this plus if I've been drinking I don't want to be messing with my phone - I'd rather passed out.
I think the goverment need to address the problem why people drink and them just saying it kills you sooner is silly - I'm not immortal and I'm going to die (so are you) so what's the point; by the time I'm 65-70 I won't have a pension anyway so dieing sooner rather than later might be the hidden benefit.
Mike
Does it tell iPhone owners when to go for a piss, based on the quantity of liquid they've consumed and average human bladder size? After all, they do like being told what to do and when to do it by some big nannying corporate entity, don't they.
And maybe it could tell them when to fart as well, and when would be optimal to sing some psychedelic praises to the depths of a china bowl?
"Guidelines on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were “plucked out of the air” as an “intelligent guess”.
The Times reveals ... that the recommended weekly drinking limits of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987 and still in use today, had no firm scientific basis whatsoever."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article2697975.ece
I would bet that many things which can immediately cancel inebriation -- a dog's cold nose, someone vomiting in your lap, a deer jumping into your headlight beams -- aren't accounted for.
Not to mention an alleged cougar's husband returning a day early from a business trip. Not that I'd know anything about that ...
Why is UK.gov *worried* about how much we drink?
They depress us by running the country into a recession, ruining the manufacturing economy, most IT staff are paid a fraction of their US counterparts, overly taxed, no raise this year, an expensive xmas, while they swan about with our tax money buying duck houses, the only consolation we have is to while away our cold nights (as we cannot afford fuel thanks to the overcharging gas and electricity suppliers) drinking taxed alcoholic beverages, as they have made smoking a joint a worse crime than murdering a family, only for them to patronise us based on some made-up scientific basis of units(after all, UK.gov doesn't listen to it's scientists re: drugs policy or "climate change" anyway) telling us not to drink!
How very well dare they.
If we live in a (quasi)democracy isn't it my choice how to go? I've chosen to drink myself to death rather than die of bowel cancer on a hospital trolley, be shot by the police as a (we didn't really check)suspected terrorist or spend my last five years being beaten by some prevert council care home worker, but too daffy to realise it...
Kudos to all the good comments above.
I thought about this app about a year ago and threw the idea away because (1) it's rubbish (2) it's flawed and counterproductive (all my friends would use this as the basis for drinking games).
As soon as I threw the idea away I should have realised that the public sector would implement it.