Tuesday, March 07, 2006

IM like stealth settings for cell phones


This is yet again a cell phone feature post; I'll try not to put any more cell phone stuff at least for the near future! ;) I'll add a bit more variety.

The feature I was thinking is how to stay invisible from specific contacts. Exactly like the stealth settings available in the newer yahoo messenger. Consider that someone is repeatedly bothering you over phone and for some reason you can't tell him straight "don't keep calling me". You don't want to be disturbed.

What you do is enable a setting so that you remain invisible to his/her calls. Basically the phone responds something like "the mobile number you are trying to reach is either switched off or inaccessible". The caller thinks you are really away somewhere and doesn't try reaching you often. You are available to other callers just fine. So it is a setting you enable on a per contact basis.

I'm surprised such a feature is not available in most phones; I did a google and couldn't find relevant stuff (that's a pleasant surprise, because many a times, what I think, someone has already thought about it!). I didn't further refine my search lest I may find someone has indeed done that before! ;). In fact there are not many solutions today to runaway from an bothering call, except may be to change your number. Or switch off the phone altogether. I think this faking of "phone unreachable" should work great for mobile phones. It still doesn't help harassment over land-line.

But ofcourse after a while, the caller will get suspicious; but you should be able to reap some benefit till then.

BTW this thought occurred to me in a train trip from Coimbatore to Trivandram. So I put this pic which we (I and Priya) took from the train when it was crossing a river. Priya had borrowed her dad's cell phone temporarily for our use; the phone ran, and she didn't answer the call as it was her uncle calling. She said his uncle will try the land-line and that's good since anyway he is trying to reach her dad. So I thought, may be there should be a way to put a whole bunch of contacts in invisible mode; so you don't even receive the call. And your phone stays fully functional otherwise.

4 Comments:

At 9:25 AM, Blogger Anbae said...

Karthick, hmmm another info.. thnkx

Liked this post.. really i felt, even struggled and to be mentioned my brother who s a business man... gets wex often with these probs....

"Ore ponnunga tholla enakku, enna panrathanae theriyala...! "




Nan illa, ippadinu my friend always used to bluff... he s using 2 mobiles.. one for his friends and another for drolling girls... hmm really...!! he s a gud flirtter... if this given info is available to usage, then he shud have to buy a alaram to wake him in the moring with a peacy sunrise... don know gud or bad?

And the pic shud be mentioned...hmm this s very hard to shoot a pic clearly in a moving train... gr8, gud work around ....

 
At 11:32 AM, Blogger Karthik Gurusamy said...

thats a really appropriate scenario.. for anyone wanting to runaway from an ex..or a bothering bf/gf ;) atleast you have an excuse saying you were somewhere in a park or something and didn't get signal!

There is a related one..it is about faking weak signal during conversation..You tell the phone purposely to inject noise into the transmission.. so your caller will be forced to end the talk..but in a way that is too cruel thing to do! ;)

Karthik

 
At 7:36 AM, Blogger Priya said...

Look at u guys! Anbae u r so mean.U can do this too girls. Ok anyway this option is really good for people who are in a meeting or anything really important, or else why would u do all this.
And karthik is these stealth settings available in service providers here, like T-MOBILE,if yes how do u change the settings.

 
At 11:41 AM, Blogger Karthik Gurusamy said...

priya.. you ask why someone has to do this? anbae gives a perfect example rite? (even though he says it's for his friend..we all know who is doing it! ;) ) .. basically when you don't want to be bothered by that ex bf/gf..who keeps calling you! :))

btw I don't think any phone supports this today.. i just think the future ones do.

Karthik

 

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