You’re welcome to take it, create it, and use it, just as long as you let me know when it’s finished. 
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I don’t consider myself to necessarily be a “plugged-in” person – I carry a cell phone (a Blackberry, actually), I frequently use text-messaging, my personal email is delivered to my phone, and I sometimes will use Yahoo or Gmail chat on the same device. However, I’m only “connected” when I choose to be. I will hear my phone ring and may not even look to see who is calling. Or I may feel it vibrate to let me know that I have a text message or new email, and I’ll not even look to see what it is for an hour or so. There really are times when I don’t want to be bothered at all, and so I end up leaving my phone (on vibrate mode) in some other room so that I don’t hear it.
Do you remember using AOL Instant Messenger back in the day? One of the things that I liked the most about it was that you could create “Away Messages” that were custom for each user. For example, I had one that I would use when I went to work – when I selected this particular away message, it would visually show that my status was set to “away” and anyone that tried to send me a message would get an automated response with verbiage that I provided, usually something like “I’m slaving away for pennies a day”. In this way, my friends could leave a note for me, and then they would know that I wouldn’t see their message until I got home from work.
There were other applications for this, too. There was a time when I was able to sign in to AIM while I was at school, and so I would set my “away message” to say: “I’m at school, but I might be able to respond. If you need something, send a message, but be patient… I may not get right back to you.” Or, I remember having one that said: “I’m at the computer, but I don’t really feel like chatting. You can send a message, but I might not reply.”
I want this to work on my phone, too. I want to set my phone to “work mode”, and I want it to:
- Turn off the ringer (put it on Vibrate mode)
- Change my voicemail message to something that says I’m at work
- Auto-reply to text messages indicating that I may not see them immediately
- Change my Yahoo, Gmail, and/or AIM status to “At Work”
- et cetera
I’m sure that I could think of more things that should happen with the device while I’m at work, but that list would be sufficient for the first version of this innovation. I could have one profile for work, one for when I’m at the gym (I don’t think my phone needs to keep ringing/vibrating while it sits in my locker), one for church, and maybe one for when I’m out with friends.
You’re probably wondering, “Why?”
My response: because SO many people seem to expect me to respond immediately to their attempts to contact me. Perhaps I’ve created this monster by responding quickly in the past, but that doesn’t mean that I want it to keep going on like this. I just want a way to provide a reasonable expectation for how soon I will reply to my peeps in the event that I don’t feel like responding right away.
Who are these people that expect you to respond right away? Why would they think you would respond? That just seems really odd to me.
Pretty much the people that send time-sensitive text messages at the last possible moment, or the people that will call 20 times in one day but never leave a voicemail. Sadly, I think I’ve created (at least part of) the monster by too frequently playing their games….
You know, I seem to recall reading somewhere (or maybe it was seeing it on the promo video) that Google’s Android mobile device platform could have settings like this.
Or maybe it was something else, but I do remember at some point hearing about a program key or some such thing for a phone that would not only have a specific mode for different locations (home, school, work, etc), but it would automatically change when it detected you were there.
Sounds like that idea needs to be married to your idea!