Location Dependent Ringtones

Have you ever been in a situation where you realized your phone should probably be on vibrate. Maybe its at the movies, in a class, during a mass or funeral, or in any number of other situations.

If you are like a lot of people you will forget to silence your phone at least once and have had it ring when you would prefer it not to. Or maybe you remembered to silence your phone, but forgot to turn the ringer back on afterwords. Then at the end of the day you realize you have a bunch of missed calls.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way your cell could automaticaly adjust its ringer. Well it can, with a bit of work on everyone's part.

Places where cell phones should typically be silenced can have small, weak, and cheap RF transmitters at their entrances. Phones could be equipped to read these signals and their software could then kick the phone into vibrate, silence, one beep, or some other mode based on user preferences. Then when you leave, your phone would switch back to whatever it had been on before hand.

The technology could even be used to transmit information about the location to your phone. A church could transmit their bulletin. A movie theater could send showtimes. A theater could send the playbill. This would of course not necessarily be the goal, but a nice side benefit.

There are challenges of course. From a technology perspective this wouldn't be too hard. But it would require phone manufactures to agree on at least some standards (frequency ranges for example). It would also require locations to install the transmitters for the idea to be useful.

Tomorrow I will discuss another solution to the problem of ringtones.