Cellphones with manners

Kyle sent me this article about IDEO designers creating prototypes of situation-considerate cell phones. among the concepts are phones that send electric shocks, use knocking as ringtones, and sport joysticks for nonverbal communication.

all good concepts, and ones i finally understand having recently made the leap to my own cell phone. specifically, my ring tones are so bad that i have to keep the phone on vibrate all the time. the goal, as always, is to simulate the analog equivalent–the knocking metaphor sounds great for this. at least it’s got to be better than pretending my friend is using a vibrator on my groin . . .