Don Marti

Tue 03 Mar 2009 11:50:55 AM PST

Locale and silencing cell phones

Chris DiBona says Locale is "awesome".

It's a tool that lets you change your cell phone's behavior based on what location you're in.

There's an obvious follow-on to that, and I want to describe it here before some clown patents it. Sort of an honor system cell phone jammer.

The first part of the system is a cell phone with 801.11b connectivity or similar.

The second part of the system is an access point with the ESSSID "Silence your cell phone" or similar, placed to cover a theater or other quiet area. This access point could be very low power and would not have to be connected to a wired network.

Finally, Locale or similar software would detect when the phone is in an advisory silent area, and silence the phone's ringer.