One day before my 40th birthday, I posted a ringtone based Honeycut’s Exodus Honey (the score for Leopard’s Intro video).

I’ve gotten many seconds of ringing pleasure from that ringtone, but since then I’ve been bothered by the everyone-or-no one approach to ringer silence. In a theater, of course I wouldn’t want my cell phone to bother others in the audience. But let’s say there’s someone whose call I would risk the wrath of the burliest theatergoer to receive, and vibrate just won’t cut it? Maybe this person is a babysitter, a physician, or a broker—someone who might phone regarding a matter of life-and-death.

Enter silence.

With silence, you can choose to silence your phone except for specifically designated contacts.

To do this, assign special ringtones for your spouse, your editor, and your press agent. Then, next time you’re somewhere where silence is mostly required, set your default ringtone to “silence”. Everyone who phones, except those assigned special ringtones, will ring your phone inaudibly, silently.

You can also semi-permanently silence specific contacts. Just assign those contacts the silence ringtone.

Some things are too good not to share.