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Microsoft Patents Tech That Would Silence Your Phone For You
tsamsoniw writes "Microsoft has filed a patent for a mobile technology called Inconspicuous Mode, aimed at helping you not be 'that guy' who disrupts movies, meals, or meetings with noisy, bright-screened phone alerts. It's a setting that would effectively put your phone in stealth mode when the device sensed it was in a movie theater (thanks to location information) and that the lights had gone down. The idea is, you could still receive alerts if a call or text came in, but no one around you would be disturbed by phone sounds or screen flashes."
I already have a phone that does this. As someone who is aware of my surroundings and generally conscientious, I simply turn my phone to "vibrate" or even - God forbid - OFF... It works very well indeed. And I even still receive alerts if a call or text came in. Amazing technology.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Or silent mode...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
people drive like asswipes because they think the world revolves around them
same here, the people disrupting the movie won't care about this. and probably won't enable it even if their phone had it.
the only solution is to wait two weeks or more until after a movie comes out to see it in an almost empty theater
as opposed to just sitting in your dark pocket?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
....but I guess you have to play the game.
Doesn't tasker already let you do this?
my device was going crazy, it couldnt seem to figure out my location...
Inevitably people occassionally forget to switch to silent mode in theaters, meetings etc. I guess this feature would be nice to have but nothing to really get overly excited about.
I can't wait to see how they plan to implement ambient light sensing from inside my pocket.
Couple that with the "Standing outside the theater waiting for someone and cannot hear my phone ringing because it thinks I'm at the theater when my friend calls to update me on when she'll be here" and you have a really great feature. Way to go MS!
I've been doing this for a long while now using Locale on my Android phone.
I thought hammers have been known for centuries, how did they manage a patent on that?
Does this really qualify as a patentable "new technology"?
Yawn
I own and operate a movie theatre. I have policy trailers that I play before every show telling you to turn your cell phone off. If I see a light from a cell phone while the show is on, I'll go in and ask you to turn it off until the show is over. If I see your light again, I'll ask you to come to the lobby with me, and when you get there I'll tell you to go home.
Since I have been doing this for years, ever since cell phones existed, I have very little problem with cell phones here.
Consistent enforcement is the answer. I have to tell maybe one or two people a month to turn their phones off, sometimes I can go a few months without having to do it once. And I can't remember the last time I threw someone out for that -- it's been at least a couple of years.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The Samsonite Gorilla already has prior art
Table-ized A.I.
There are several programs that can be set to automate your phone like this. The problem is that location awareness isn't as good inside a movie theater as you might hope. For instance, I live about a half a mile away from the nearest megaplex. I setup a rule on my phone to turn off the ringer and wifi when the phone is at the address of the cinema. However, the rule kept triggering when I was sitting in my living room. Even if I didn't live so close, if I was shopping at the stores next door, my phone would be going to vibrate mode automatically. I've found that doing location based things only works well if your location isn't near anything else. For instance, I work in the middle of nowhere. I set a rule to turn off WiFi & bluetooth from 8am to 4:45pm when I'm at my work location. Works great to save battery. But for the movies, I still set it manually.
Currently, using wifi location, my phone thinks it is on the other side of the road from where it actually is. Accurate enough to find the nearest bus stop or whatever I'm looking for, but certainly not accurate enough to know that I am actually inside a particular screening room of a theatre rather than out in the foyer or in a shop next door. As I'm indoors, GPS or Glonass location isn't an option, and even if it was, it still isn't accurate enough for that.
Where would we be without ya, MS?
The room should tell my phone that there's a movie, meeting, et al. going on (based on a published schedule)
Calls should have a priority
The phone should respond appropriately based on the situation and priority of the call
For example: a low priority call might go to voice mail if I'm in the middle of a meeting, but make the phone ring if the same call happened after the meeting is over. A high priority call could make the phone vibrate or ring depending on the situation and my preferences.
So who is going to volunteer to maintain a list of every movie theater's latitude and longitude? How will they be paid? Will this sort of "location aware" 'feature' be turned into a premium cost of a few pennies per user that is silently added to every smartphone with it enabled (or, with licensing, a few dollars)? What happens when whoever decides to maintain this list doesn't feel like it anymore?
Like the MsShotgun?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
So the idea is that Microsoft will know your location at all times? And i'm sure they won't sell that information to interested 3rd parties. It'll turn the phone into a bratty little brother/sister who reports everything you do to home base.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
If the phone is in your pocket (or purse) how can the phone determine if the lights have gone down? Does is see through cloth and leather?
What if microsofts location information turns out to be as accurate as Apple Maps? Will phones randomly go silent?
Err, how would it detect that the lights have gone down if it's in your pocket?
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
the fuck do I even read this god forsaken site? fuck this place, never coming back
Being "That Girl" was OK for Marlo Thomas.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Most assuredly, as with many other phone features available, this is something that will have a ON/OFF toggle function and many people will simply have it set to OFF no different than the similar functionality is currently set to on their phones today.
The phone sounds that disturb me are not coming from the phone. It is the people USING the phone.
And most of the time this is not even the sound that disturb me.
It is people who I am trying to have a conversation with, but they pick up their phone every 30 seconds and answer some message.
Then when you wait till they are finished, they say: pleas go on, I am listening. In reality they answer each question with 'huh?'.
Perhaps next time I should take out my phone, keep on talking and texting them that they are extremely rude.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
OMFG!
Someone could TEXT you and you'd not be able to respond UNTIL YOU TURNED YOUR PHONE ON!
Do they mean, when the person puts the phone away in his or her pocket? I'm not sure exactly how light sensing is a good method of telling anything about the location of a phone, even when combined with GPS data...
A couple years ago I was a judge for a county science fair and one of the entrants was kid that wrote an app that did this. He did it so that he would not get his phone taken away while he was in school.
Can this device also detect when any of my friends are around and hide the microsoft/windows logo and show an Android one instead?
Thats the sort of app that "some guy", or Jeddiah's wife (http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3381701&cid=42585393) could produce and release for free, but if a megacorp think of it, they have to patent it.
I leave my phone at home when I go to the cinema, nobody's that important that I want to ruin my movie by listening to them, *and* look pike a p***k in front of a theatre full of people. They can leave a message...
That's going to be one heck of a database. Every little bistro, conference hall, concert hall, tavern with live music, etc.
Why not some short range (Bluetooth?) protocol on a device that broadcasts a "please use quiet mode" signal?
Have gnu, will travel.
There already are apps that enable that and many more things...
This is the abstract of the patent:
A communication device is configured to switch from a normal mode of operation to an inconspicuous mode of operation in which a reduced set of information is presented on a home screen of a display of the device in comparison to a set of information presented on the home screen in the normal mode of operation. In addition, other display properties such as contrast and brightness may be adjusted to make them less conspicuous. The home screen in the inconspicuous mode of operation is less obtrusive or conspicuous to individuals than in the normal mode of operation. The device may enter the inconspicuous mode upon user request or by detecting at least one environmental condition using a sensor available to the mobile communication device. The environmental condition may be anything that the device can detect or sense in its surrounding environment such as ambient light or sound. The device may return to the normal mode of operation by user request or when the environmental condition is no longer present.
I expected that the summary had misrepresented the claim, but after reading this I can't see how this can be considered an innovation as there are numerous apps providing the same functionality.
I agree with you, in this particular case. But there will be situations where I find something trivial and obvious that you find to be a pain in the ass, and vice-versa. Once person might say "I'm aware of what I'm watching and it's trivial and foolproof to press fast-forward on my Tivo remote when there's a commercial" and the other person might say "I shouldn't have to do that or think about that, when I'm trying to concentrate on the actresses' boobies, so mythfrontend should automatically commercial-skip for me." One person might say "I want a padlock icon when it is a totally sure thing (except for a glossed-over list of exceptions, all of which I want to always be un-acknowledged) there is no MitM attack, and I want lack of an icon when the certainty is less than 100.00%; I don't want to think about grey areas and degrees of certainty" and another person might prefer a realistic UI which says "MiTM is probably not happening" or "MitM is very very likely not happening" or "The level of conspiracy required for a MitM right now, has precedent." or "You only have one stranger's assurance that nothing shady is going on, and betrayal would require no conspiracy at all."
We say just a little awareness and common sense solves the problem, maybe because our phones happen to be something we sometimes think about, for whatever reasons that have emerged from our personal quirks. Someone else says "I shouldn't have to be aware of something as unimportant as the current sleep/wake state of one of my pocket computers, among the dozen items I happen to be carrying." If eyeglasses or shoes or hats sometimes spontaneously started screaming in response to external activity, that same person might want the behavior automatically suppressed at some times, whereas you and I would probably raise an eyebrow at the thought of ever buying a screaming hat in the first place, because we already have enough to worry about (our phones) without having to worry about screaming hats.
Different strokes for different folks.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Honestly, this is mad. It is wrong. So wrong. A location based serivce which disables the alerts of a phone. Come on! On the other hand it is just consequent. They also accepted a patent on the progress bar. Maybe I should patent a technology which produces fart noises in cinemas. I am absolutely sure, that people would want that.
So this is an idea: When you set your phone to "stealth", it will start broadcasting, maybe once per minute, some kind of bluetooth or wifi message that urges neighboring phones to go into stealth mode automatically. If the other phones pick up enough of these requests and are so configured, they will comply. Phones going into stealth mode automatically don't retransmit the request. It only works when you have a large number of phones in a small area, which also happens to be when it needs to work. Possibility of abuse, some.
that this is not an invention, but an idea, or worse, a combination of several simple ideas. It's like a patent for a pianodeskbed, something that you can sleep in while playing the piano, sitting on a desk. Wow, are we clever at Microsoft. Are we quick at Apple?
Every time I leave home my phone reminds me to take it with me, based on location. Wait, no, sorry... I get back on that one.
--------
* Sigh *
It unfairly and unilaterally impedes the first amendment rights of the callers who have the right to express their opinion that the callee would benefit by the new and exciting services the caller has to offer. Corporations are people my friend. Robot autodialers are agents of the corporate-people who are assigned the right from the corporate people.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Last year they applied for patents on interpreting users striking their devices. Now, they want to make devices less annoying.
Are they learning from their previous mobile efforts?
Hey Bob, users find our phones annoying and want to hit them. Can we do something with that?
Microsoft have patented 'mesh pockets' transparent to both sound and light waves.
Seriously, the worst are idiots talking into neck-cradled mobile and pissing into the urinal. I feel sorry for the person on the other end of the conversation.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
This better trun off when you call 911 as the last thing you want to for the sound to be to low when you call 911.
Android "Smart Actions" have been doing this for years and I'm sure there is an equivalent in iOS. Again, this is not patentable.
Here in Australia, all the movie theaters (the ones I have been to at least) have signs in the lobby that say "turn off your phone during the show" and they have signage on-screen during the ads that says "turn off your phone during the show". I have never experienced people being annoying with their phones.
What about the US is different and why cant theaters just tell people to turn off their phone (make it a condition of entry and eject people being annoying). If you absolutely have to be contactable, you should either not go to the movie in the first place or you should set your phone to vibrate and leave the theater to use it.
I have long wanted my TomTom to sense the sound level of what is going on around it and to detect if someone in the car is talking. If it detects talking, it will merely beep and put text on the display when it has something to say.
I can't tell you how many times that thing interrupts conversation in the car with some speech I would rather not hear at that exact moment. A beep with text and maybe a "say it anyway" button would be great.
Because in the US rudeness varies a lot as do our other personality attributes. There are some ethnic/cultural attributes which vary interestingly. For example, asian people seem to have the most positive of stereotypes where they are nearly always concerned about whether or not they are in someone else's way. They never want to be rude. Black people tend to be the opposite as they never seem to care when they are in the way of anyone else, talking TO the movies and more. White and hispanic people seem to vary more in the middle of the spectrum. I think it's also important to note that while the stereotypes are "generally" true, I know some black people who simply do not fit the description at all as well as a few asians who aren't very 'asian.' But everyone seems increasingly comfortable talking about the problem of black people in the movie theaters so why can't we tell the rest of the truth and be okay with it?
I guess it would have been enough to say "we have a lot of different types of people and personalities in the US and we don't think or act the same." But sometimes I like to elaborate.
Here's a better version of this technology for movie theaters, and I'll give it away free: Movie manufacturers can add a short ultrasonic code at the beginning of each film's audio track that alerts the phone a movie is starting, and also encodes the film's length so the phone knows when to turn back on. Phones can run a free "Movie Silence" app that runs in the background (or better yet, bundle it into the OS to save on overhead).
Of course, for safety and user control the "Movie Auto-Silence" option should be a toggleable setting with emergency overrides, probably for specific contacts or in certain locations. (i.e. you wouldn't want your phone silencing itself at your own house)
Granted, my proposal was a little different as most phones did not have GPS. So I proposed little transmitters movie theaters could purchase. But same concep...
So here we go, prior art from 2004.
http://www.whynot.net/ideas/1242
Another Patent Office Rubber Stamp without any type of search. I wish the USPO could be invalidated
I have been using an Android app called Locale which was designed with just that in mind. It allows me to change my phone's configuration based on location, time of day and a bunch of other criteria. For example, it can change my wallpaper and ringtone when I'm at work, mute notifications at night, etc. I have been using this app for years.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Prior. Fucking. Art.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kebab.Llama&hl=en
My MSc thesis implemented this with an identical use case as the primary example. A phone that changes modes based on the play state of a home theatre, location information, the identity of the caller, etc, would change the how the phone interacted with its users.
http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/7430
"Silence" sign in local library.
What with all that "legal crap" in the terms of sale. Enjoy the butthurt.
Honestly where is the invention in this.
Why don't companies get a clue that it is negative PR to be patenting obvious things like laying mines for unsuspecting people to stumble over and get sued!
I am so glad I don't live in one of the tiny number of oppressive regimes that actually have software patents.
How primitive. Next you will be telling me they still don't use metric as well!
These kinds of patents always make me wonder... if back in the days this kind of patent practice would've been the norm, imagine how after the first discovery and implementation of a for/while loop concept every company would've run to the USPTO and patent something they "invented" based on the loop. Yes, it's a bit extreme, but sometimes you have to be so, to make a point. So, let's say you have a computing device (I couldn't care less if it's mobile or not, all computing devices _should_ be treated the same way, because they are, and no, size doesn't matter) that has location identification capabilities, and instead of letting anyone implement their ideas based on using such location information, people line up and patent everything they can come up with. We know location, let's patent silencing your device, let's patent actually telling you where you are, let's patent changing backgrounds and sounds based on your location, let's patent changing the time based on your location, let's patent switching your navigation map based on your location, let's patent texting your wife that you're close to home, ............. we just arrive to a point where you can't really do anything anymore. Some people call those sci-fi movies unreal which show societies where companies control everything. Do you think we didn't arrive there yet in this and similar fields? Think again: we're awfully close.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"Phone That Silences the World for You"
Nokia Situations. (I had it on my 5800, and it worked very well)
http://getpebble.com/
What bothers me is that you folks walk around with a device in your pocket tracking your every move, every purchase, every "like", and every time you belch. I can't see myself ever doing that.
People, come on. What is next, smart wipe toilet paper that wipes my ass when it senses fecal matter around my poop-chute? What we need isn't a phone that thinks for you...if anything, it should make the phone 10 times louder than it would be otherwise while in the movie theater. Maybe people will learn to use, I dunno, their BRAINS?
So today's nugget is about what constitutes a patent being "obvious." It may not be what you think. If someone suggests an idea to you, you might think, "Jeez, that's obvious!" and discount the idea as something you should have thought of first.
That's not what obviousness has ever meant in the patent system. "Obviousness" means that, to a person skilled in the art of the invention, it would have been obvious to combine features of existing inventions to create the claimed invention. The obviousness doesn't apply to the features themselves -- they need to already exist in analogous inventions. The obviousness analysis applies to the obviousness of combining those features into one invention.
So, if you assert that a claimed invention is "obvious," you need to show that every claimed feature -- every one! -- already existed in one or more prior invention. And then you need to demonstrate why it would be obvious for a person skilled in the art to combine them.
There's more to it than that, of course. Case law has drawn boundaries and conditions around the methods that can be used to perform these analyses and around the types of inventions that may be considered. And there are cases wherein secondary considerations, or even the very nature of some inventions, would actually "teach away" from, rather than suggest a combination. There are also cases when a feature is read into an analysis because it truly is "obvious" in the colloquial sense (it's obvious to design a water-holding vessel so that it does not leak).
Hope this is helpful, because I think most people who post here really do want to feel like they know what they're talking about, and when they make statements that just seem silly to someone working in the field, it's not intentional.
So now you know. If you want to educate yourself further about the concept of patent obviousness, Google the KSR v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) case and review commentary on 35 U.S.C. 103.
I pretty much never take my phone off of vibrate mode because of the fear of forgetting about it and making a scene during some very somber moment.
Even not actively, just by building a Faraday cage into their buildings. Or actively jam too, like some jails do, because significant proportion of the jail's outside.
Families coped fine without them until relatively recently.
So stop whinging & expecting life to be at your beck n call.
Nokia cell phones had this features for decades.
As if we weren't already insulated enough from interacting with our environment, or the concerns of other humans, let's give ourselves the ability to be less consciously considerate of others.