Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Can you hear me now? No? Good!

Don't you just hate it when you go to church or class or meeting, and then your cell phone goes off, and then everyone looks at you weird, and then they start giving warnings to tell people to turn off their cell phones? YA awkward.... So here's one for whoever's trying to beat Apple's iphone.

Cell phone! you KNOW where I am. I personally don't mind at all (and I doubt many people care) if you snoop on my life a bit and find out where I go, listen in on the surrounding, GIVEN that you don't tell everyone and their moms, especially not the cell phone company CEO's mom. So help me by following these simple rules:

1. Check my schedule --
I scheduled an meeting with Mr. Mai P. Lowe in the afternoon at one. It's important. Go to silent automatically.

2. Check my location --
If I'm in a school building, in a classroom, and sitting in the front row seat, I want to make sure I don't miss a call from my buddy asking if I left for class yet. YA. Go to silent.

3. Check the surrounding --
The ambient noise is really quiet, only one voice is speaking with great emotional distress. Que the theme song for Naruto! WOOT! no. Go to silent.

4. Respond to signals --
Make a cross platform device that will signal cell phones to go silent, and make sure cell phones obey it! If the CEO's of cell phone companies won't cooperate, call bomb them while they're all at a meeting discussing why they don't need the device.

Use machine learning techniques and learn where the user wants the cell phone on silent -- like when he fumbles to get out his cell phone as soon as possible to turn it off. Of course, when you're trying to be smart, always show the user what you've learned so the user can change the setting manually in case you were wrong.

Here's another thing... I want my cell phone on vibrate because even though it has to be quiet, I would like to know if someone needs to find me for something important. So, first off, if I'm carrying the phone and didn't realize that it's been going off for a long time, it's okay, make a little beep.

Second, can we have a cell phone service for emergencies or really important calls? Like charge an extra cent per minute or something, but make sure that the ringer is on loud enough on the other end. When the automatic response comes up for the voicemail, add one more option for important calls. Of course, calls from Mr. Boss will always be important, especially when my alarm clock didn't go off in the morning. Make the ringing louder and louder until I respond. It'll save more than a few lives, it'll like save bad murder mystery novels that need non-responsive phones as a plot device.
(NOTE: if you like this idea, PLEASE REMEMBER to allow users to disable important calls from their obnoxious friends.)

Will you look at that! Right now my schedule says: sleep, my location: bed, so interweb, please go silent!