Just in case you didn’t see David Pogg’s entry on “Free Services to Inspire Your Cellphone”, it has some nice references to many interesting services. After all smartphones are cell phones, and all these services would work on your smartphone.
On a different note, I recently had two experiences where some generally agreed upon cellphone etiquettes would have been helpful. One person sat next to me at a café, and started to have a loud cellphone conversation that lasted about half an hour. I learned a lot about his business, but unfortunately it wasn’t something to write home about. Another one was at the cashier, where someone was ordering and paying while continuing her engaging cellphone conversation. I don’t think this was appreciated by the cashier and the long line behind her. We probably should be beyond these “incidents” by now knowing that we have been using cellphones for 10+ years.
Let us skip the cellphone etiquettes (knowing it is an old topic) and get right to smartphone etiquettes (which are probably a superset of cellphone etiquettes anyway)? What would be the situations where smartphone etiquettes would be helpful? And what would they be? Just a question for now to start some thoughts as I continue to discuss this topic with users and experts and hopefully bring back some useful insights.
Clicking away on a smart phone during a meeting can be seen to be disrespectful if everyone assumes you're checking your e-mails, instead of taking notes. If you're getting stares, maybe ask someone to clarify the spelling of something, so it's clear you're taking notes. :0
Answer: Thanks Eric for the suggestion. Maybe the etiquette might be "if you're planning on taking notes using your smartphone during a meeting, let others know, so they are aware that you are engaged with them, and not distracted by e-mail or other smartphone activities. If the note taking on the smartphone is however distracting to you or to them, consider a notebook and a pen"
- Pierre.
Posted by: Eric Eggertson | December 09, 2006 at 08:34 PM