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
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/phoneyscapeWe 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.