My Nokia E71 smartphone has a selection of available specialized profiles, of which the most useful one is probably “Silent”, for use in meetings and theatres. Useful, yet I use it with trepidation.
I fear the Silent profile because I KNOW, I’m practically certain, that I will forget to turn it off when the meeting is over, only to discover later an accumulation of “missed calls”.
The obvious solution, which seems to elude the good designers at Nokia (and at the makers of every other Smartphone I’ve used to date), is to implement a profile of “silent for one hour”, or maybe “silent for N minutes” with user entry of the duration. This mode would automatically revert to the normal noisy profile after the specified delay.
The same concept applies to software tools that help you stay productive in the face of the endless inflow of information. The notion of a “Do Not Disturb” button that turns off alerts of incoming messages has been around for some years; and we’re beginning to see tools that apply it. ClearContext, an Outlook add-on that helps one sort through the mail and integrate it into one’s overall time/task management environment, features this button to control email notifications. As the impact of the growing infoglut grows, I expect we’ll see more in this space.
And another thought: in ages past, someone wanting peace and quiet would retire to a convent for a year or a lifetime; in our present hectic era, a tool giving us an hour sans ringtones is the best we can hope for…
My Nokia E71 smartphone has a selection of available specialized profiles, of which the most useful one is probably “Silent”, for use in meetings and theatres. Useful, yet I use it with trepidation.
I fear the Silent profile because I KNOW, I’m practically certain, that I will forget to turn it off when the meeting is over, only to discover later an accumulation of “missed calls”.
The obvious solution, which seems to elude the good designers at Nokia (and at the makers of every other Smartphone I’ve used to date), is to implement a profile of “silent for one hour”, or maybe “silent for N minutes” with user entry of the duration. This mode would automatically revert to the normal noisy profile after the specified delay.
The same concept applies to software tools that help you stay productive in the face of the endless inflow of information. The notion of a “Do Not Disturb” button that turns off alerts of incoming messages has been around for some years; and we’re beginning to see tools that apply it. ClearContext, an Outlook add-on that helps one sort through the mail and integrate it into one’s overall time/task management environment, features this button to control email notifications. As the impact of the growing infoglut grows, I expect we’ll have more in this space.
And another thought: in ages past someone wanting peace and quiet would retire to a convent for a year or a lifetime; in our present hectic era, a tool giving us an hour sans ringtones is the best we can hope for…
My Nokia phone (not a smartphone and quite an old model) does have this feature – instead of using the quick access button to set the phone to silent, try going to the equivalent of Settings then Profiles. Select Silent then you get three option – Activate Personalise and Timed. Select Timed. You are then given the option of setting the time the profile expires. The phone reverts to the previous Profile, eg General. I used to use this to set it to Office (where I had it set to ring once then just vibrate so that I could hear it but not continue to disturb others if it was on my desk unattended) and then when I got out of the office at 5pm it would ring normally and I could hear it more easily from the depthsof my handbag.
Thanks for sharing, Carolyn! Mine doesn’t have this option, but other readers may well benefit.