I often leave my cell phone on vibrate during the day, especially on meeting heavy days. I hate being that guy in meetings. But just as often I forget to turn the ringer back on when I get home.

That makes finding my phone a challenge – it could be on the counter, under a pile of papers, between the couch cushions, in the pockets of the pants I was wearing at the office. Finding it currently involves walking around with my VOIP phone and listening for the vibrating cell phone. (I think most of my calls from my VOIP line are for this purpose.)

There’s a relatively simple way to solve this problem: remote control. I’d love to be able text a message to my phone like “Find phone” and have it beep, regardless of ringer settings.

OK, that’s a frivolous use.

There’s an even better reason to develop this kind of control – lost or stolen phones. If you lose a phone, it’s fairly easy to get the carrier to disable access to the network. That doesn’t prevent whoever finds it from accessing any personal data you might have on the phone. As more and more data gets stored on phones, this becomes a privacy and security issue. It would be nice to have a “destroy all data” command.

Of course, there would be a password.