Booked the usual taxi to the airport today. We don’t own a car right now, as we live in the city centre, and are within short walking distance of 4 car hire companies, bus routes to all parts of the city, and the central train and bus stations. Just don’t see the point in buying one to have it rot away in the garage. The retained interest on the car money alone pays for all the buses and car hire for a year!
The taxi company has a scheme whereby they can give your phone a brief ring to let you know the taxi is approaching. OK, it’s a nice hack. But really it tells you that there’s a presence and notification feature set bursting to escape from legacy telephony, if only we can co-ordinate enough people to have compatible end-points.
Wanted to call my wife when I got to my parents’ house. Checked first to see if she’s on Skype. No deal, so I call. She’s out. The problem is, I’m afraid to call in case I wake up sleeping babies. We only have one landline phone sat in the study where the littlest madam sleeps in the day. But even if I had a second one plugged in and, say, in the kitchen, I can’t selectively ring just that one. So no point. Yes I could hack up all sorts of schemes to get around it, but there’s no out-of-the-box solution whereby the caller can select the nature of the ring/interruption (“sotto sotto”, please).
This time, I don’t see a feature that everyone on the planet needs. But I do see the need for a “Voice 2.0” system that is extensible and flexible enough that crazy people like me who choose to lead less-than-conventional lives can have our communications systems fit about us, and not the other way round.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:29 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I agree having the ability to set how the phone at the other end (the one you're about to call) acts would be interesting. I'm sure I've already read about similar functionality, the caller choosing the ring tone (noise!) the call recipient hears.
But it's really down to the phone user to manage how he/she is interrupted (if at all, there's an off button).
There is the functionality to set to silent if you attend a meeting for example.
The whole usefulness of this functionality would be shattered if I could ring the phone, set the call to very loud and play a stupid frog ring tone.
Thinking aloud here, maybe the ability to ring the phone no louder than the current setting is the answer.