I recomend an attachment or device built into cell phones that acts as personal "jamming". These are very easy and compact circuits to build. Folks wishing to engage in phone conversations in theatres (or just too loud anywhere) will find that they will have to leave the area to do so.

Good luck,Kevin Mckenzie

what about being able to send someone's number via a simple text-message (sms).... or while on phone to send a number via sms... your phone then asks "yes or no" to accepting the new number and name... automatically goes into your name bank... then comes up as dialable....

Sam3000 offers a way this might be accomplished. But it might mean an extra step. And for people not familiar with how to send sms or text, it would be too much education. My method could be simplified by having the phone always capture any tones that were sent during a conversation and then offer to save them when that conversation terminates.

The user could then create either a voice or text tag to identify the captured number.

I like this idea, there was alot of such ocasions where I needed to write down the number. I agree that the simplest was is to capture DTMF tones tht represent numbers. Everything needed for it to work is already in the mobile, it just needs to be utilised and programed into the mobile phone.

Nokia did this already! It is the ability to send an electronic 'business card' which is the data on your phone about a contact sent as a special sms to another user (not a feature the phone comapnies provide in teh US - only the rest of teh world is on this sms standard, apparently... poor yanks) The recipent can decide to store the data automatically in his phone list, or delete it. Unfortunatley it is not a standard used by the other phone makers, so only works Nokia-to-Nokia.

I often use the record function on my phone (motorola) is also useful when somebody is trying to give you directions, you just press the key on the side of the phone and you get a recording of the conversation as "voice-note"

Jeezer and others still see SMS as a way to accomplish this. I don't think so. SMS would work if most people used it or even had access to it. You can't easily send sms between carriers in most countries, and you can't send it at all from a land line. Tones are ubiquitous, simple and require the least effort and training. Just tell your caller "please key in that number for me."

Why can't we have phones that can capture the tones with a voice tag and sms.Phones can leave off purchaseable content and all that crap, give the user some useful functionality. A standard PC interface would be nice too.

I use a Treo 180 as my cell phone, and there are thousands of free applications developed for it out htere. I wonder if someone who knows a thing or two about Palm OS programming could write this as an application. It would then work on all later model Treaos as well. If the WickSmith is still following the idea, maybe you can try to find an eager programmer to do this.

Yes, I'm still following this discussion. I brought it up with a programmer who should know, and he said that there would need to be a piece of hardware to do the decoding. I thought this might be the case, but the hardware would be a tiny chip that should be readily available. I would think that the same chip that generates the tones for dialing could be slightly enhanced to provide the reverse process. Aside from being convenient, this could save lives.

I just had the same idea earlier tonight and took to the web to see if it already existed, and then I stumbled onto this site and this discussion.

For all those that suggested the SMS approached covered there missing the whole point that by using a voice tone it would allow any tone enabled phone to send the phone number, talk about backwards capability. Also this would also allow information like compaines (411, etc..) to send you numbers directly, no additional protocol needed.

A question I have is obviously I wsa not first person to think of this idea but what would stop me from pursuing it or even patenting this idea or another one from this site....mind you I'm not saying I am going to I just want to know a little more about how this works. I love thinking up new ideas and would love to discuss them but honestly I worry if I really come up with a great idea and post it someone else could steal it.

You ask why someone could not take my idea and commercialize it. I think that's part of the reason people contribute here. I don't have the money or the access (or the lawyers) to take this idea any further. If you have the means and the patience, by all means claim it as your own and take it forward. I would be delighted. I simply want to see the feature on a future cell phone.

Another reason people come here is that they like ideas. Commercialization takes a different skill set than ideation.

I ask the question more for my own information that for any serious inquiry to take this idea and commercialize it. I'm new to this site and did read the creative commercial license link at the bottom of the page but don't think I really understood what it implies. I'll search around a bit more, thanks for the reply.

The point is you don't want to punch the keypad at all when you are driving. Bad idea!

I think Jimmy Wang may have the wrong perception of this idea. The person driving does not punch in anything or write anything down. That's the whole point. The person on theother end does the keying in. This is a way of recording a phone number without having to punch it in. And of course it's not necessarily for people who are driving. There are dozens of situations (walking, drinking coffee, hands otherwise occupied) when you can't write down a number.

Regarding the "Jamming" idea. Bad idea. Physicians try to have a normal life but darn-it, people just keep getting hurt. A physician must always have access to their cell phone. They put it on vibrate and they leave the theatre to talk. But if you were to "Jam the cell frequencies" you would put people in harms way.

It is simple enough for the person to call you back and leave a voice or text message, or page you on the cell phone with the number they want you to have. Alternatively, press the voice record button on your cell phone and it will record their side of the conversation and you can play it back later.

junkstopsphere also seems to have missed the point.

Of course it is (somewhat) easy for the caller to call back and leave a message. The point is what works for the person who needs the number, and presumably wants to call it right away, such as an emergency? What works best for the person who doesn't, for any number of reasons, have a pen and paper handy? For both parties, the easiest possible solution is for the person who knows the number to key it in and have that number recorded and saved on the other person's phone as a number ready to dial. It's simple, immediate, accurate and useful. An excellent aid to the handicapped as well.

Newer Nextel phones automatically deliver your name and phone number when you call someone else with a Nextel phone (first name only and phone number...this feature can be disabled if desired).

Most phones do that, as far as I know.

I don't want to know the number of the party I'm talking to. I want to know a number he can tell me, but I am not in a pisition to write it down.

What if there was a personal voice recording button that could be configured to record your conversation while pressed and auto saves it as a playable / transferrable file for you to play back at another time. By wanting to save a phone number or somthing similar by just incorperating voice recognition or by having an available text editor (Wordpad) in the phone appear during playback where you can key in some information and save it as the neccessary format, weather it be a dialable phone number or a list of items or which ever needed.