Palm files for automatic call filter patent

Say you’re in a meeting. You don’t want to have to answer any calls, but at the same time, you want the important people to be able to get through - you don’t care that Mary down the hall made brownies (awesome though they may be), but you do want your boss to be able to ring through and let you know the contract was approved.

So, what do you do? If you’re Palm, you implement call priority filtering, and then patent it. Essentially, the way it works is that for certain contacts you give them a call priority rating (one for the boss, wife, and kids; two for your mother; three for your mother-in-law; and four for Mary down the hall). Then, when you have an important calendar appointment, you enter a call priority rating and only phone calls from that rating or higher will get through, lower rated callers will go straight to voicemail.

Will we see this on the Pre? Well, that’s anybody’s guess, but if there’s any truth to Roger McNamee’s ramblings about the Pre being able to tell if you’ll be late for that meeting you don’t want interrupted, then maybe it could happen.

[Originally posted at PreCentral.net]