A patent application filed on July 13th 2006 details a device allowing mobile phone users to press a button telling the person on the other end of the phone to stop talking while they concentrate on something.
Designed for car drivers who spot an upcoming hazard the phone would have a button so that they can press it and tell the caller to “temporarily reduce her conversation intensity level”.
Brilliantly the entire patent is worded as if a nagging wife is calling.
Imagine the conversation:
Wife: “Why are you late home again, its been every night this week!”
Husband: Beep – the driver is approaching a hazard, please stop talking.
From the patent:
The Driver-Attentive Notification System was invented to allow a driver who is conversing on a cell phone to purposefully inform a remote caller to temporarily reduce her conversation intensity level when faced with an attentive condition.
The device works when the driver presses an activation switch, which causes the notification system change to an activated state and then sends a notification message to a remote caller to inform her to temporarily reduce her conversation intensity level. A resume message is also sent to the remote caller when the driver changes the notification system back to the deactivated state.
This message is sent to inform the remote caller that it is ok to resume her normal conversation intensity level.
Via USPTO
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Wikipedia has more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_Attentive_Notification_System