{"id":127682,"date":"2019-01-23T19:32:37","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T19:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=127682"},"modified":"2025-07-01T22:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:29:14","slug":"bloxvox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/bloxvox\/","title":{"rendered":"Hold private phone conversations in public with this dumb invention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/image\/upload\/v1548262037\/editorial\/bloxvoxheader700.jpg\" alt=\"BloxVox\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The open office floorplan is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/90285582\/everyone-hates-open-plan-offices-heres-why-they-still-exist\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">disaster<\/a>. It began as a Silicon Valley experiment to put everyone in the same huge room to spark collaboration and creativity. But that presupposes that every employee <em>likes<\/em> that environment or can thrive in it. Some tasks require concentration, which is harder to come by when your neighbor is having a rad brainstorm sesh just a few inches from your ears.<\/p>\n<p>And what happens when all your coworkers have to jump on the phone? That&#8217;s where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloxvox.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BloxVox<\/a> comes in.<\/p>\n<h3>What is BloxVox?<\/h3>\n<p>See that incredibly stupid thing the man is wearing in the photo above? It&#8217;s a device intended to muffle the sound of your voice so your colleagues can&#8217;t hear, while the microphone from your headset slips inside, allowing the person on the other end of the call to hear clearly.<\/p>\n<p>Sound stupid? It is!<\/p>\n<p>Watch this thing in action:<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the BloxVox creators have a point, after all. Sometimes, you need to make a phone call and it&#8217;s better not to broadcast your end of the convo to the rest of the office or coffee shop or train car.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-127673\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/bloxvox2.jpg\" alt=\"bloxvox\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" \/>And sure, you might need to look like Bane to pull that off, but what&#8217;s the harm in that?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ksr-ugc.imgix.net\/assets\/020\/878\/750\/d8b30b4f9cec354f304b434d6bffb979_original.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;w=680&amp;fit=max&amp;v=1523643258&amp;auto=format&amp;gif-q=50&amp;q=92&amp;s=d19f21d80b4ce2d61589879cef6efd24\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s see how the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/bloxvox\/bloxvox-for-private-phone-calls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kickstarter<\/a> community welcomed this invention&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-127676\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/bloxvoxfunding.jpg\" width=\"439\" height=\"395\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Oh.<\/p>\n<p>To its credit, one Kickstarter backer spent at least $875 to get the 25-pack. And it looks like BloxVox is still holding out hope of world domination. On\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloxvox.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the BloxVox website<\/a>, they offer the opportunity to create custom units for corporate clients.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-127679\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/corporate.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"325\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So you and your fellow Starbucks baristas could walk around with a Starbucks-branded muzzle on your face, talking about how badly you need a new job. Seems like a perfect solution.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s possible that BloxVox was a case of the perfect product at the imperfect time. After all, its design presupposes that you have headphones with a microphone on the cord. And then Apple dropped its AirPods on everyone, completely destroying any BloxVox compatibility. Or maybe people just don&#8217;t want to walk around like horses wearing feedbags.<\/p>\n<p>Thoughts and prayers to the BloxVox team for their failed attempt at whatever that was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wear a muzzle, talk in private. Win-win!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9139,"featured_media":127683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-127682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326718,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127682\/revisions\/326718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127682"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=127682"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=127682"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=127682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}