Smartphone Feature Request

You are talking on your smartphone and your friend asks you for someone’s phone number.

“Hold on,” you say, “I’ll give it to you.”

Then the fun starts. You take the phone from your ear, poke around to find the number, and even though it is only 10 digits you worry you can’t remember all of it in one go. So you go into what I call head-banging mode. You put your phone back to your ear, say the area code, look again for the next three digits and say those … then your friend starts to read back the first digits or misses them … you get the picture. It takes four tries to get the number across and you still aren’t sure they got it right (but they’ll call back if they need to).

Here’s my feature request … a button on the contact page “transmit number in text-to-speech” or even “transmit number by SMS”.

Replay the situation. “Hold on,” you say, “I’ll give it to you.” Now, when you find that number, you just click that button and it speaks the number (maybe twice) or sends the text with the name and specific number. Done. No head-banging.

Android team, are you listening?

Cyclists’ no fly zone

I had another great bike ride with friends on Sunday morning. I noticed that the little flying insects are out along various marshy and low lying parts of our route.

After one short pit stop I was glad to get over 5mph so the flies could not keep up. I soon found myself on a sweeping downhill and building speed nicely. However, I noticed at those speeds I was getting hit in the face by the flies I had been swatting away when still (no windshield on most bikes apart from rare exceptions).

I realized I had experienced both ends of the no fly zone: below 5mph the flies buzz around in their annoying fashion, and above 20mph they can’t get out of my way in time (hint, keep mouth shut at speed!).

Cyclists “no fly” zone: 5-20mph.