Rob Farley

Rob Rob Farley has been consulting in IT since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997. Before moving to Adelaide, he worked in consultancies in Melbourne and London. He runs the development department in one of Australia's leading IT firms, as well as doing database application consultancy and training. He heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, and holds several Microsoft certifications.

Rob has been involved with Microsoft technologies for most of his career, but has also done significant work with Oracle and Unix systems. His preferred database is SQL Server and his preferred language is C#. Recently he has been involved with Microsoft Learning in the US, creating and reviewing new content for the next generation of Microsoft exams.

Over the years, Rob's clients have included BP Oil, OneLink Transit, Accenture, Avanade, Australian Electorial Commission, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Royal Borough of Kingston, Help The Aged, Unisys, Department of Treasury and Finance (Vic), National Mutual, the Bible Society and others.

Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley



18 November 2005

Ring volume

Around the office there are several ringtones that are just too loud. Drives people crazy. The most ordinary of ringtones can be awful if it's too loud.

When I'm at work, my phone sits in its cradle just a few inches from my keyboard. If it rings, I'm going to know. I don't need to have the volume very high at all.

But then when I get up from my desk, and go and talk to someone, or pop out to get some lunch, or go to a User Group meeting, I typically forget to turn the volume up. So I miss calls. Or Greg Linwood misses calls when we're waiting for Chuck to phone back for the webcast (which by the way, seems to have lost the audio completely now - hopefully we'll have more luck next time). Point is - when there's other noise around the place, I want the phone to be louder.

It already handles volume adjustment if I'm talking into it and it detects that it needs a gain change, so I think it should detect the ambient noise and make the ringtone louder! If I'm in my car, it should belt out its ringtone as if I'm hearing impaired. If I'm somewhere quiet, it should do a modest little ring. I don't want it to start quiet and get louder - it will have probably gone to voice-mail by then anyway. And I figure that since my phone is a PocketPC, I should just be able to patch it to have this. Or even find an API that would let me program the phone to do it myself (you know, in all that spare time I have!)

Posted by Rob Farley at 4:03 pm