Slashdot Mirror
Polite Cell Phones
yEvb0 writes "Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day, monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater or talking to his boss, and even letting callers decide whether they'd like to interrupt based on this information."
monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater
Ok, I'm confused enough, now, where can I buy this cellphone from?
Set your phone to vibrate. It's been working for me for years. Non-invasive when doing anything in my daily routine.
Is there really a reason I should have to enter my schedule into my phone? Because it's not going to happen.
My work here is dung.
since people obviously don't anymore...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
a polite human being.
Seriously folks! How hard is it to turn off the ringer? Are we so daft these days that our phones have to be polite for us?
I meta-moderate because I care.
But can it tell the difference between a movie theater and my pocket?
This guy's the limit!
How about no? Letting callers decide whether to override YOUR preferences? That'll work well.
How about just put the damn thing on silent/vibrate, and leave the rest of us out of your phone call world. I don't need to hear your l33t ringtone.
A lot of people use their phone as a watch these days, so it would be nice to have the possibiltiy to turn off the phone functionality but keep the clock functionality. Ditto with phones that have cameras, PDA capabilities, etc. That way you could still use them in aircraft, hospitals etc. without having the problems an active phone are supposed to cause.
All the phones I've had are either fuly ON or fully OFF with maybe juts an alarm fucntion being available.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
It seems to me that most of the "rudeness" of phones stems from peoples strange addictions to ringtones. I just leave my phone on silent/vibrate all the time, and just never worry about disturbing anyone. It's sad that so much energy has to be expended to deal with such an issue. Plus, many of those strategies sound iffy at best since, for instance, many women keep their cell phones in their purse/bag, rendering any attempt to guage light or sound pretty much useless. Plus, as far as sound is concerned, how many people are going to feel a bit disturbed by the fact that their phone is now ALWAYS "listening".
That being said I see two useful features (which may have been mentioned in the article that I admit I haven't read). One, simply have the phone check your calendar to see if you have a meeting scheduled. Two, provide some type of "snooze" button. Right now, if you decline a call because you're in a meeting, you still get an annoying beep when they leave a message, or the same damn "ringing" 10 min later when they call again. Why not have a single button basically put the phone in silent mode for the next half/hour/n minutes?
So your phone is constantly 'listening' and evaluating the sound level.
Listening to what, exactly? I can see the headline in a couple of years:
"Your cellphone is listening in to all your conversations"
And thanks to a new virus, is transmitting them!"
How is that like the american phones. When the vibrate goes off people go and pick up the phone and start talking loudly to it. Many times it is far more interupting then the phone itself.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Taking away my rights" is what happens when I throw their phone in the nearest trashcan, "Invasion of privacy" happens after that, when they feel the sudden impact of my foot in their groin.
Thankfully, restaurants and theaters are allowed to block cellphone transmissions here in the Netherlands.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Of those phones which do ring in an inappropriate place, the owners of the great majority have simply forgotten to turn their phone off (they're forgetful, not sociopathic). Movie theatres, concert halls, libraries and other please-keep-quiet places could have short-range radio equipment inside which sent a "this is a quiet zone" signal. You'd program your phone (and it would come programmed by default) that when it was receiving that signal it would go onto the vibrate-only ring preference. When the signal was lost, it would revert to your default. So when you entered, and when you left, there would be no need to remember to set the phone correctly (the nagging ads always remind me to turn my phone off, but very often I forget at the end and leave my phone off for the remainder of the day). Similarly noisy places like train stations and airport concourses could broadcast a "this is a noisy environment", which your phone would typically interpret to mean that it should use a loud, shrill ringtone.
There >are Phones should, incidentally, have an "answer with hold" button. So a doctor in the movies whose phone rang (silently) could take it out, notice that it's the hospital's number, and push "answer with hold". The caller would get a short recorded message saying "this person is aware of your call, and will be with you shortly - please hold" - that way the doctor can take the call, but doesn't have to talk into the phone until they've walked into the theatre lobby, where they can take the phone off hold and talk.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
What? Grues use currency these days, do they?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
My motorola flip-phone thingy has this delightful habit of starting to bleep (bleat) about the battery charge level and somehow it manages to work out the most annoying possible time at which to start. Say, 2am or so. It very rarely seems to bleat during tpical wake times.
Please, Mr Cellphone software developer, give me an option for a timerange when the phone will be silent. Yes, I'm sure I could turn it off but really, what are the odds of remembering? I know the odds of my wife remembering to turns hers back on are about 0 - from long experience.
We went to a nice restaurant yesterday morning for breakfast. The building was entirely copper clad. We got no signal inside, and we were just fine with that.
They call themselves "Copper Bleu", but I think a better name for them would be "Faraday's."
John
It will work regardless of whether the phone owner is rude or not. Like someone on the bus who gets a call they don't want to answer, and their phone is not on silent. They just stare at the phone as it rings and rings. I hate 'em. There is absolutely no reason for phones to have ring tones at all. The amount of intrinsic rudeness in mobile phones is ridiculous.
A lot of people put their phones on vibrate when they go into the movies.
Only to sit there and have a conversation the moment it rings.
Needless to say, movie theaters need to have flamthrowers available to the audience.
already is a polite phone. It can be automatically turned on and off, e.g., during a meeting, and change the ringer volume based on the lighting condition... Just use brightcam http://treoware.com/
I've been wondering for years why cell phones don't allow you to program ring schedules. TFA mentions this feature in passing as something that's already out there, but I've never seen a phone with it. Is it only in top-end phones, or has it trickled down in the 18 months since I bought my last phone? I should say that I've always purchased mid-range cell phones, I only upgrade when my contract is up or the phone breaks, so I never have the latest and greatest.
/rant.
With that one exception, the features described in TFA seem virtually worthless. Is it really worth feeding my cell phone speed and breaking information from my car so that it doesn't ring for the 15 seconds out of the day that I'm breaking hard? Yes maybe some day when my phone already connects to my car and it's trivial to pass this information along, but such a small percentage of cars and phones interact with eachother now that it seems ridiculous.
Certainly there are some features that could prevent phones from ringing at impolite times, for example, Wired article from like 1998 talked about how this emerging standard called 'bluetooth' would allow theaters and other areas to set up "quiet zones" which you could set your phone to automatically respect and switch to silent or vibrate. There's no need for my phone to have a set of expensive sensors to help it guess what I'm doing at the moment. KISS.
The real problem with cell phone politness is the user. If people could just remember that answering a cell phone implies that the conversation is more important than what they're doing at the moment, and then stop and decide if it actually is, 90% of cell phone annoyance would disappear. Also, learn to love vibrate mode.
Silent or something like that. A device could be installed in locations that would try and pair with any bluetooth devices. You could allow the device the first time, and then everytime you visit that location again, it would automatically shift your phone into silent mode. Would be great for meeting rooms & movie theaters.
the greatest thing about email is it is asynchronous. i can communicate with someone else on my schedule, without my thoughts being interrupted by random claptrap. that's why my first cell phone ever was a blackberry, and before that the idea of a cellphone in my life horrified me. it didn't represent freedom to me, it represented being chained whereever i went. even now, my blackberry is silent, no ring or vibrate whatsoever, i just look at the screen every 5 minutes or so. i can't imagine a life interrupted and ruled by the random claptrap of a cellphone ringing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If (as TFA suggests), monitoring the ambient light is an indication of cinema-ness, then my phone, which spends many hours in my coat pocket or in a flap-covered holster, must think I'm the most entertained guy in the world.
BTW, if they're going to allow scheduled ring times, I think that's great. But (especially relative to the movie scenario) a very short keystroke sequence that says "don't ring for the next 1/2/4 hours" would be used 100 times more often than TOD programmability, IMHO.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,2028 1,18104683-5001022,00.html
Seriously, the problem isn't the gadgetry, it's the people who use the gadgetry. In the link above, a woman's cell phone rings in a movie theater, then she whips it out and starts talking on it during the movie. Polite ringers won't do a damn thing when it's people that are the problem.
Let's invent polite people. Problem solved.
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
I've been waiting for programmable ring times for a long while. To me, as a student, it just makes sense. I would rather have my cell phone switch between loud and vibrate according to the times I'm in school (so I don't have to try and remember to turn it on loud when I'm walking home, a time when I would never feel a phone vibrating). A day based schedule would work best, with an option in the contact list for an alternative schedule or override.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Polite people don't need it. Rude people won't buy it or learn how to use it. Seems a wasted effort.
I've always thought a good solution would be to have a small vibrating device fixed to your watch (say), which would be triggered by your phone (bluetooth or similar). You wouldn't miss any call when the phone's away from you, and perhaps you could configure the phone to ring audibly if it isn't able to contact your (*ahem*) vibrating device. Best of all worlds?
Andy
The problem isn't the phones, it's the morons who use them. I can't get on a bus round here without some group of braindead teenagers watching music videos or oh-so-amusing 'comedy' video clips using the phone's external speaker turned up full. The kind of person who thinks that is acceptable behaviour is not going to bother with a polite phone.
Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day,
Maybe "researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University" should make the effort and head down to their local electronics store to see which of the features they are so busily researching are already available in shipping phones.
As for the rest of the scenarios, leaving your phone on "buzz" works just fine. In particular, if it's in your pocket, it's silent, when it's on a hard surface, it makes a lot of noise--just what you want.
Why not have a feature that if the phone (via GPS, cell towers, what not) knows that you are in a theater or in a *place* then it would automatically change to vibrate or some other defined setting? Just an idea.
The idea of a smart phone doesn't sound too appealing, there are just too many exceptions to rules, and I am generally better at choosing for myself.
I think before we even get into changing phones so they're smart, why not change them so they're not retarded first? The biggest problem I have with phones is that many of them (the two motorolas I have) beep when you change yourself from "loud" mode to silent. At least when you don't have the phone open. Now what idiot thought up this idea? You're sitting in class, or a theater, and suddenly realize you left your phone on. Now you have to make a decision, do you annoy those around you by having your phone beep at you as you turn the ringer off, or do you run the risk that it might ring.
Also as other people have said, once it rings and you hit the ignore button, don't beep for a voice mail message, or ring again from the same person etc.
While people who use their phones all the time are generally better about remembering to turn off their phones, those of us who get a couple calls a week, and almost never during the day often don't think about the fact that they have their phone with them wherever they are.
Basically, just fix the idiotic notions programmed into cell phones, and then think about smart phones.
Phil
One with a dead battery.
There were discussions about having people wear various light and sound sensors so the phone could make an "intelligent" choice whether to ring or not, or going through an extensive training period where the user tells the phone whether to ring or not, and the phone "learns." Like with anything online these days, the topic went to how much private data was the user willing to give up in order to allow the callers to decide whether to make the phone ring or not.
Hello??? The problem here is that people are thoughtless. No amount of tech is really going to change that.
This reminds me of that old joke of the difference between the American space program and the old Soviet space program. The Americans spent lots of money to research and develop a pen that would work without gravity, while the Soviets used pencils. Nothing new under the sun.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.