I have a confession to make.
Actually, it’s less a confession and more a declaration: quite a few years ago, I invented visual voicemail.
I didn’t write about it in my blog at the time because I thought it was such a good idea that I didn’t want anyone to steal it before I could cash in. Also, I wasn’t sure that somebody else hadn’t thought of it first, and I was reluctant to make a fool of myself by trying to take out a patent on someone else’s idea. So I brought my concept for a website where individual voicemail messages could be downloaded as MP3s to some technical and business-minded people, but I had a difficult time explaining its value and ingenuity, so I never got anywhere with it.
For those who don’t know, Apple and AT&T included visual voicemail in the first iPhones several years later. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be bitter even if I could know with certainty that I was the first person in the world to think of that idea. I’m sure almost everyone of average intelligence has had the experience of coming up with an idea, only to discover that someone else is already making money from it, or soon will. No hard feelings.
That being said, I want to be totally clear about a new idea that I’ve had for how mobile phones could be improved: if you’re aware of any phone that has this feature, please alert me to it. If you aren’t, and decide to implement it, please pay me some royalties that you consider fair.
Here is the (ridiculously simple) concept … I should be able to program my mobile phone to switch to silent/vibrate mode according to a schedule. The implications will be quite evident – I’ll program mine to be silent during working hours according to the times I’m in the office, as well as between midnight and 6 am, and also for individual occasions when I’ve arranged to eat in a restaurant, meet a doctor or see a movie. It should be easy to do this through a phone’s built-in calendar, but I should also be able to tap into my phone’s alarm or settings area to tell it not to make a noise at all for the next three hours or so.
Sorry, you were beaten to it.
Some/many Nokias have a “timed profile” feature – you can switch to a profile for a certain period of time, after which it will revert to the previous profile. My old 6310i had it but current E61 doesn’t, for some reason.
The silence-by-schedule function also exists – for Nokia S60 3rd edition (for example) you have “Smart Profile”, “Handy Profiles” and “Profile Scheduler” (BTW in researching my comment I discovered the last one and that it’s free so I’ll be installing it :-) )
It is a shame that this very useful function isn’t a standard feature, but at least smartphones have the capability to have it added with extra software.
my phone has an application that can change all of the settings based on location. that way even if i go to work at a weird time or stay home when i should be at work, my settings would still be correct.
@Yitzchok
Very interesting; thanks for letting me know. My last Nokia was five years ago and I hated the OS, the cheap feeling of the hardware, everything about it. I’m impressed that they have such a feature.
@alex
Does it connect to GPS or some other location-based service and change the settings for you, or do you have to tell it “work,” “gym,” etc, and then tell it again when you move on to your next location?