from Hacker News

An app that lets you pretend to receive a call when a co-worker distracts you

by r0muald on 3/6/17, 6:08 AM with 63 comments

  • by blowski on 3/6/17, 7:51 AM

    Just be honest and say "please don't think I'm being rude, but I really need to get on with this work." You can be assertive without lying or being nasty.
  • by bigbugbag on 3/6/17, 8:14 AM

    That's a clever social engineering scheme to collect phone numbers.
  • by random_upvoter on 3/6/17, 10:49 AM

    I never understood why a telephone gets precedence over somebody who made the effort to come to you in person.
  • by mhd on 3/6/17, 7:59 AM

    Reminds me of the "Boss Key" you had in earlier games (or as a TSR in DOS), that showed some fake spreadsheet instead of your game screen. This is basically its cubicle cousin.
  • by dovdovdov on 3/6/17, 7:36 AM

    Resume your focus! ...until our partners call you on a hourly bases for the rest of your life. ;)
  • by cyberferret on 3/6/17, 8:10 AM

    I was going to jump on this before I realised that (1) I have my phone on DND when I am 'running silent, running deep', and (2) I found out from the comments here that it doesn't work outside the US.

    Perhaps to address both issues, there could be a version of this that doesn't actually make a physical call? Perhaps a pairing of an iOS/Android app to a button on the browser which send a standard in app message (free) to the phone associated with the button. The app could then simulate a ring tone, which would be enough to complete the illusion of an incoming call?

  • by libeclipse on 3/6/17, 7:49 AM

    Why not just honestly say you're busy? Works for me.

    There's quite a few versions of this. I think a cheaper option is an app on your phone that imitates a phone call.

  • by staunch on 3/6/17, 10:58 AM

    Just yell "I'm wired in!" and get back to it!

    (teehee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=942sTOBISQs)

  • by kozak on 3/6/17, 11:24 AM

    The problem of being distracted when coding was greatly reduced for me when we moved to Git from more ancient version control tools. With faster/easier committing and history browsing, I can now make smaller and more logically divided commits, and thus need to keep less context in my head at every single moment.
  • by andrewflnr on 3/6/17, 8:06 AM

    What an outrageously annoying website. I love it!
  • by scandox on 3/6/17, 7:47 AM

    I created a version of this in 2006 (I think), called Getmooh.com - Get Me Out Of Here. The idea was to get people out of bad dates with an automated call.

    I used the Skype API with VB6 and some natural voice libraries from AT&T. We mostly got used for prank calls with pre-recorded messages we had. Worked OK. But cost us money and I got bored once it was built. We got maybe 60,000 sign ups I think.

  • by JoshTriplett on 3/6/17, 7:19 AM

    Amusing idea. Absolutely no good reason for this to require a Chrome-specific extension, though; this would work in any browser.
  • by annerajb on 3/6/17, 12:55 PM

    This seems great for those situation where telling the person that you are busy, or cannot attend them anymore wont cut it.

    Usually a phone call is the only detractor for them to interrupt me. at the end it ended up being just to let me know something like i got this to compile!! which could have been done on slack or lync.

  • by Raed667 on 3/6/17, 7:38 AM

    I think this works only for US and Canadian numbers. Which isn't mentioned anywhere on the website.
  • by spb on 3/6/17, 2:03 PM

    I made a similar app to this for Pebble at a hackathon in 2015: https://github.com/phoneyscape

    We got an offer from Madrona Ventures for it that I never ended up following up on.

  • by mysterydip on 3/6/17, 11:09 AM

    Related but with a different focus, Chelsea Handler made an app called "Gotta Go": https://gottago.io/ The process was detailed in one of her Netflix episodes IIRC.
  • by mikhailfranco on 3/6/17, 11:22 AM

    False premise - a phone call should never be allowed to interrupt a real conversation.
  • by gherig4 on 3/6/17, 7:54 AM

    This is a blatant advertisement
  • by Markoff on 3/6/17, 10:07 AM

    pretty standard feature on Japanese phones for unemployed people or people who wanna look more busy or important, I guess people in West don't care do much about losing face our impression
  • by ninju on 3/7/17, 12:57 AM

    Note the fine print in gray (or is it grey) text at the bottom the page

    (Any discount code associated with this experience will expire on December 31, 2017.)

  • by edsykes on 3/6/17, 8:36 AM

    "i'm sorry, i'm on a deadline"
  • by raarts on 3/7/17, 7:07 AM

    I just say: i'm going to get me a coffee (water, restroom) and when i return they're gone.
  • by tvaughan on 3/6/17, 4:15 PM

    If you don't have your phone on airplane mode then you do want to be distracted.
  • by taksintikk on 3/6/17, 12:35 PM

    Simple but powerful.

    Great job.