These devices are also a way for people to bridge the gap between the birth of a new form of annoyance (people driving while sending text messages, for instance) and the point at which lawmakers finally organize a response. “In those petty cracks of life is where you can see the desire for revenge is alive and well,” says Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami.
For inventor Michael Donine of Temecula, California, the problem was simple enough: His wife, Laurie, didn’t approve of his habit of going to a local casino to play poker on weekday mornings—and would regularly call his cellphone to check up on him. While sitting at the poker table one day, the 47-year-old entrepreneur lit upon a possible solution: A device that would play background sounds that could fool her into thinking he was actually somewhere else.
Excuse booth
Donine first imagined building an “excuse booth” for patrons at casinos, nightclubs and racetracks, but dropped the idea when he realized he would have to rent a warehouse and hire employees to collect change. In October, after consulting with a Chinese manufacturer, he came out with a quicker solution—a device the size of a key chain that plays 10 one-minute “excuse” tracks, including police sirens, a thunderstorm, airport public address announcements, an auto-repair shop and a secretary who says, “Excuse me, you have an urgent call on line two.”
After selling nearly 100,000 units of the “Xcuse Box”, Donine says he’s working on an updated version with new sounds, including a carpool of screaming and fighting children. “It’s a little bit more edgy,” he says.
Calum Dunan’s idea came to him during a golf tournament in Scotland as he stood waiting at the tee while the group in front of him spent 15 minutes scouring the course for a lost ball. As he became increasingly frustrated, Dunan realized his problems might be solved with a gadget. He’s currently working on the final prototype of “Timeball”, a device with five LED lights that turn on, one by one, until a golfer has exceeded the regulation five-minute limit on looking for a lost ball. He hopes to convince golf courses to promote the device. “I do believe this is going to be a household name,” he says.
Some products, like the “Outdoor Bark Control Birdhouse”, which aims to quiet loud dogs, came about by accident. Though the technology has been around for five years, the manufacturer, Radio Systems of Knoxville, Tennessee, initially sold it as an indoor training tool for pet owners. But the company says it began getting requests from customers for an outdoor version that could be used on annoying neighbourhood dogs. When a market analysis showed 60% of consumers would welcome a covert way to shut up somebody else’s canine, the company decided to proceed. Mike Taylor, a Radio Systems executive, says the company doubled the bark controller’s range to 50ft, then asked a focus group to help figure out a way to camouflage the unit so neighbours wouldn’t know what it was. After flirting with fake rocks and footballs, the company settled on a somewhat unlikely design—a brightly painted Bavarian-style birdhouse. “I was the first user,” says Taylor, who says he tested the prototype on an obnoxious neighbourhood German shepherd. “I’m sleeping pleasantly now.”
Zap them with silence