Vibrating Tattoo…I thought at first that that might the name of a dodgy heavy metal band I saw one drunken night at a questionable venue in the 80s. Turns out it’s Nokia’s new patent. The Finnish trailblazers now own the means of alerting you to your ringing phone via a design on your skin.

Which begs the question of, should you ever feel the need for a vibrating tattoo, where you would place it.

I am open to be persuaded of the benefits of this device, but I can see some drawbacks. For instance, how would you ever duck a call? Show me a professional who doesn’t have colleagues/suppliers/customers who he would prefer not to talk to and I’ll show you somebody who is in his first ten minutes of his first day at work. We’ve all ignored a ringing phone at some point in our careers – and it’s a lot easier to disregard something that’s ringing on the other side of the office than something that’s ringing in a more intimate place.

And what about those thick-skinned monsters at the telephone marketing companies? They could make your buttock/back/bicep vibrate all through your bath/concert/evening at the cinema with their efforts to sell you a kitchen. Hmm, never thought there could be a way for these people to be more irritating but Nokia seem to have provided them with one.

Oh, and let’s not even contemplate wrong numbers. They’ve always been a pain in the, er, neck. At least now you can choose what part of your body you want them to be a pain in.

You know, looking at all these down sides, I think I prefer a phone that just rings. Anybody planning on patenting one of those?