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Being a polite person, I turn my mobile phone off at the
movies, theater, seminars - in general, any event where a
phone going off might annoy an audience. However, since I
went back to school, I find myself turning my phone off much
more often (class every night) and forgetting to turn it back
on. I hate thinking I've gotten no calls, then realizing that I
just happened to leave the darn thing off, and I missed several
important calls.
Mobile phones have alarm clocks, so I know they have timers.
It shouldn't be that hard to make one that automatically turns
itself back on after a set period of time. So, I'm going to a
four-hour class, I set my phone to turn itself back on in four
hours. I'm at a movie, I set it to turn itself back on in two
hours. I could be polite AND not miss calls.
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An improvement I came up with in class tonight: You
could pre-set your phone to turn off and on at given
times, so, for example, at the start of the semester, you
program in your class schedule, and don't think about
turning it on and off until the term is over. |
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I think this would be a harder feature to do than the
simple turn-back-on timer (it'd need more memory, and
probably require far too many button-pushes for the
average user), so it's probably just an "I wish," rather than
a truly halfbaked addendum. Still, it'd be nice, and it's
possible with existing technology, just unlikely due to
market demand. |
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Prehaps you could do it by boundaries. |
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If you cross a boundary into or out of a cinema or your phone can detect it and take the appropriate action. Therefore you can visit a cinema it would all be done automatically unless you choose to override it. |
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I have my StarTac ALWAYS set to vibrate, rather than ring. Beyond simple politeness, this has the added benefit that if I hear a cell phone ringing, I know it isn't mine regardless of what the ring tone sounds like.
If I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone, I usually won't interrupt the conversation to take a call - I let it ring into voicemail. If the caller doesn't leave a voicemail, I check the caller ID and return the call. All of this works for me because only my friends and family have the number. |
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I had a motorola text pager a few years ago - that had a turn on/off time on it. I think it was because in those days they were mostly used by doctors/drug dealers who were only on call at certain times of the day. |
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Vibrating phones are nearly useless for me. Since most of
my clothes don't have pockets big enough for a mobile
phone, I keep it in my purse. Additionally, my phone
doesn't have a "vibrate" option. |
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I'm sure many other women choose to keep their phones
in their purses for similar reasons. |
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clynne, what you need is a vibrating purse into which you can plug your phone. then your purse can vibrate, and you won't miss that important call. |
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I thought about a vibrating purse, but then I realized that
it would inevitably start vibrating and jumping around
when it was open, and spill all of its contents everywhere,
and I'd start wondering if my life were a TV sitcom again,
and then I'd go crazy, and need to start carrying huge
quantities of pills around in my purse, which would all
jump out and spill everywhere making an even bigger mess
when my purse vibrated... |
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Somewhat baked. My Ericsson phone can go in and out of silent mode at predetermined times. It does not power-down, it just won't make any noise during those times. |
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A whole semester's schedule should be able to be programed into phones, so that it goes on and off at predetermined times depending on the day of the week. While the memory/buttons issue is a good one, it should be very easy to do with palm-pilot/cell phones.... |
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Another possible feature, voicemail countdowns. |
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"You've reached Friendly Fire's phone. Please leave a message, or alternatively, call back in 'ONE' hour and 'TWENTY' 'FIVE' minutes." |
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yeah, i don't really think the memory is a significant
problem. you can easily store a date (as an offset from a
past time) in 4 bytes -- so estimate that people probably
wouldn't need more than 25 on/off slots. that's nothing.
50 slots. |
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how many people would go to the trouble to program 50
things? very few. but i'd use one over and over for guest
lectures, the movies, etc. |
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as to aristotle's comment, i know that Nokia is working on
a cellphone supressor in conjunction with the city of San
Jose -- like a damping field that a movie theatre could
install in order to kill everyone's reception. maybe
aristotle's idea is a polite medium. |
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