Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Best Phone App ever

Is there anything they don't do nowadays? You can use your phone to surf the web at breakneck speed, watch full length movies in High Definition quality, and even (as Scott likes to say) use the tip application to figure out how much to leave after your meal. It’s called the calculator but don't tell him (he thinks he's special!)

For all I know the new models may even do more than the old "bass-o-matic" from SNL. They could slice, dice, chop, and frappe. Of course I forgot the texting, tweeting, and whatever else the next big thing is.

But once your done with your 4G, LOL, Hash tagging, it seems to me that the one thing that's missing from the modern smart phone is the "phone" part. Just because you have a keypad doesn't mean you can't dial 10 numbers, put the phone to your ear and have a conversation. And so help me if I have to sit through another insipid exchange like yesterday.

The "push-to-talk" feature can be very useful but can also be overused. If you're at a dispatch job and need to find a crew quickly, hitting a button and talking to them is amazingly easy, but using that same technology to carry on an entire back and forth conversation while sitting next to me on a crowded train is not only annoying but also stupid. I was especially not amused when you said to the woman on the other end "do you have the number for the jail?". Uh, yeah...No.

See that might be a conversation that you can have quietly on the phone without that little "chirp" in between each sentence. Much the same reason I don't talk to my doctor about that raging case of herpes on speaker phone in a crowded restaurant.

If you're really that desperate to have a conversation, roll down the window and ask the guy in the car next to you, "Pardon me, do you have any grey poupon?"

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