To Call or to Message, That is the Question


Ever wondered what’s the right way to contact that friend or relative or colleague of yours? Do you message them? Or do you call them? What if he is driving? Is she at home or outdoors? Is it too late to call your colleague about that urgent issue that just came up?

Guess what? Apple just might have the answer for you. How, you wonder. Apple’s recent patent might give us some hints.

There’s GPS on your phone using which the software could identify where you are: at office, at home, some place else. So you could set rules like “If at massage, no phone calls at all” or “If at pub, no calls from office colleagues”.

The receiver could also set rules based on that ancient feature of the phone: the good old clock. I mean rules like “If beyond 10 PM, no calls from office colleagues”.

Well, those are some explicit rules set by the potential receiver. If that were all there was to it, it wouldn’t be such a big thing. But wait, there’s a whole lot of decisions the phone could infer on its own.

Like the phone’s software could use the microphone to check how loud it is. Too loud and it means it would be better off for that person to message you, not call you.

Or the motion sensors on the phone could gauge whether you are driving and decide that it’s a safe bet that you wouldn’t want to take calls while you are driving.

Combine all such rules and your phone could post the info on to some central server. And so when someone picks up his phone and selects your name from his contacts list, the data from that central server would show him a message: “Better to message; she’s driving”!

Now is that awesome or creepy? You decide.

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