We’ve all done or experienced it ourselves – some of us multiple times a day. It’s quiet at the office or whichever public establishment (supermarket, restaurant, movie theater, etc.). The silence is shattered by the blaring ringtone from yours or someone else’s cellphone. If it’s your phone that’s going off and it’s a call you can’t just send to voicemail, you sometimes have to inconvenience yourself by stepping away from your desk, seat, table, or talk at a whispery volume all for the sake of keeping your phone call private without distracting others around you. In other cases, the recipient of the phone call (if it’s not you) has no regard for their surroundings, talking loudly and openly to the point where you hear every detail about the person’s conversation, whether you like it or not.
Now there might actually be a solution for both issues that arise out of these scenarios. The Hushme is an innovative device that’s only come out with prototypical models, but is specifically designed to contain the loudness while reinstating the privacy element of making or receiving phone calls in public areas. Dubbed “the world’s first voice mask for mobile phones,” the Hushme has a neckband-style design that contains a pair of wireless headphones with Bluetooth-synced earbuds. The device’s “masking mode” enables you to muffle your conversations so you won’t be a nuisance to others around you, while assuring your conversation will be conducted privately. It closes over your mouth using a pair of connectable magnets.
The Hushme’s headphones are also synced with a downloadable mobile app that lets you play overlaying sounds to further assure nobody hears your conversation. There are a variety of masking sounds you can choose from that are emitted through external speakers on the outside of the headphones. You can play natural-sounding noises like wind or rain, sounds of animals like monkeys or squirrels, and even cinematic noises like Darth Vader breathing, R2D2 beeps, and the chatter of minions.
Even though the Hushme can be used while you’re on the move, the company’s target audience primarily focuses on people who work in open-office environments that need privacy on demand like when they receive a phone call at their desk. The goal of the device is to convenience yourself by privatizing your phone call without inconveniencing others around you by being too loud or disturbing your coworkers or other patrons (depending where you are).
While no information is available on the device’s public release, the US-based company hopes the initial cost of the Hushme is under $200.
Filed Under: M2M (machine to machine)
