The Busy Bar Is a Gadget to Get People to Leave You Alone
The Busy Bar Is a Gadget to Get People to Leave You Alone
Busy Bar：一款让你远离干扰的办公小工具
Focus and productivity apps abound, all to help you stave off the many distractions coming from your phone. Or the annoying people at your open-office desk. Digital well-being tools can silence notifications, limit apps like TikTok and Instagram, and help you focus on the task at hand. But you can also turn them off very easily as soon as you feel like you haven’t endlessly scrolled enough.
市面上充斥着各种专注力和生产力应用，旨在帮助你抵御来自手机的各种干扰，或是应对开放式办公室里那些烦人的同事。这些数字健康工具可以静音通知、限制 TikTok 和 Instagram 等应用的使用，帮助你专注于手头的工作。但一旦你觉得还没刷够短视频，也可以非常轻松地关掉它们。
This is where Flipper’s Busy Bar comes in, a hardware clock with an LED screen that doubles as a clock and a dedicated timer. Slap the big button in the middle, and the screen displays a bright red “BUSY” sign or another message that lets the people around you know you’re, well, busy. (Maybe try “GO AWAY” or “GET OUT OF MY ROOM, MOM.”) The bar goes on sale today and costs $249.
这时，Flipper 推出的 Busy Bar 就派上用场了。这是一款带有 LED 屏幕的硬件设备，既是时钟也是专用计时器。拍一下中间的大按钮，屏幕就会显示醒目的红色“BUSY”（忙碌中）字样或其他信息，让周围的人知道你确实在忙。（你也可以设置成“走开”或“妈，别进我房间”。）该产品今日开售，售价为 249 美元。
“How do you let people know politely, yet firmly, that you don’t want to be disturbed?” says Callum Tennent, a creative writer at Flipper. “We decided the politest way to do it was a massive red light on your desk.”
“如何礼貌而坚定地告诉别人你不想被打扰？”Flipper 的创意撰稿人 Callum Tennent 说道，“我们认为最礼貌的方式就是在你的桌子上放一个巨大的红灯。”
Flipper Devices made the Flipper Zero, a $200 portable hacking tool that got big on TikTok in 2022 for using a Tamagotchi-esque dolphin character to detect wireless frequencies and potentially break RFID-controlled locks. It was a device that raised a variety of security concerns. Canada proposed a ban on the device out of fear that it might enable car thefts. In 2023, the US Customs and Border Protection seized 15,000 Flipper Zero devices, then ultimately released them. Flipper is currently working on another model, the Flipper One, that has even more advanced capabilities.
Flipper Devices 此前曾推出过 Flipper Zero，这是一款售价 200 美元的便携式黑客工具。它在 2022 年因其类似电子宠物的海豚形象而走红 TikTok，该设备可用于检测无线频率并可能破解 RFID 控制的锁。这款设备引发了各种安全担忧，加拿大曾因担心其可能导致汽车盗窃而提议禁止该设备。2023 年，美国海关及边境保卫局扣押了 1.5 万台 Flipper Zero，但最终将其放行。目前，Flipper 正在研发功能更强大的后续机型 Flipper One。
In between those more controversial devices comes the Busy Bar. The bar also works with the separate Busy app, yet another one of those productivity and focus tools living on your phone. What it doesn’t have is the capability of hacking anything. “It’s being made by us here at Flipper, but there’s no real connection to them,” Tennent says. “They’re totally disconnected products.”
在这些充满争议的设备之间，Busy Bar 诞生了。它还可以配合独立的 Busy 应用使用，这又是手机上众多生产力和专注力工具中的一款。但它并不具备任何黑客功能。“它确实是由我们 Flipper 制造的，但它与我们之前的黑客设备没有任何实际联系，”Tennent 说，“它们是完全独立的产品。”
Fundamentally, the Busy Bar is a pricey “On Air” light. It offers many of the same productivity capabilities that are likely already baked into your phone’s operating system—like blocking notifications on your phone. But Flipper is making the case that—much like the Brick, a hardware gadget you tap to block access to certain apps—having a hardware option to shut off the distractions around you is meaningfully different than just trying to use software productivity tools on your device.
从本质上讲，Busy Bar 就是一个昂贵的“直播中”指示灯。它提供的许多生产力功能，很可能已经内置在你的手机操作系统中了，比如屏蔽手机通知。但 Flipper 认为，就像通过点击硬件设备来屏蔽特定应用的 Brick 一样，拥有一种能切断周围干扰的硬件选择，与仅仅在设备上使用软件生产力工具是有本质区别的。
“It seems absolutely crazy that you have to pick up your phone in order to stop yourself from picking up your phone,” Tennent says. “I’m so brainwashed that I will pick up my phone to do that and immediately get distracted by whatever notification is there.”
“为了阻止自己拿起手机，你竟然还得先拿起手机，这听起来简直太疯狂了，”Tennent 说，“我已经被‘洗脑’到这种程度：我会为了设置专注模式而拿起手机，结果立刻就被上面的通知吸引，从而分心了。”
The Busy Bar has manual buttons. One switch swaps modes, a dial lets you set stretches of time, and a giant button on top starts or pauses the session. For focus purposes, the bar can set timers that replicate the Pomodoro technique, a productivity practice that relies on timed intervals of work and small breaks.
Busy Bar 配备了手动按钮。一个开关用于切换模式，一个旋钮用于设置时间段，顶部的一个巨大按钮则用于开始或暂停计时。为了专注工作，该设备可以设置模拟番茄工作法的计时器，这是一种通过定时工作间隔和短暂休息来提高生产力的实践方法。
The Busy Bar is also Matter-certified, which means it can be programmed to work with other smart-home devices. When integrated, it can control smart speakers or trigger lights. If you’ve got color-changing lightbulbs, for instance, you could hit the switch and turn all the lights in the house red to show everyone that you really need to be left alone. The bar can also be used offline. There’s an app, but it’s not required. If you want it to connect to your phone, you can just connect the bar and your phone with a cable and control it from there.
Busy Bar 还通过了 Matter 认证，这意味着它可以被编程以与其他智能家居设备联动。集成后，它可以控制智能音箱或触发灯光。例如，如果你有变色灯泡，你可以按下开关，将家里的所有灯光调成红色，向所有人表明你真的需要独处。该设备也可以离线使用。虽然有配套应用，但并非必须。如果你想让它与手机连接，只需用线缆将两者连接即可进行控制。
On a Zoom call or recording a podcast? You can set it so that when your microphone is active, the Busy Bar will automatically indicate that you’re busy, so you don’t even have to press the button at all. You can control it remotely through Wi-Fi, too, so you can mount it on a door or wall instead of having it next to your desk. The big LED screen faces away from you, but there’s a monochrome screen on the back so you can also see how much time is left on the clock.
正在进行 Zoom 通话或录制播客？你可以进行设置，当麦克风处于活动状态时，Busy Bar 会自动显示你正在忙碌，甚至无需手动按下按钮。你还可以通过 Wi-Fi 进行远程控制，因此可以将其安装在门上或墙上，而不必非要放在桌边。巨大的 LED 屏幕背对着你，但背面有一个单色屏幕，这样你也能看到剩余的计时时间。
“I’ve seen people online calling it over-engineered,” Tennent says. “But I think once they get the device in their hands and understand what you can really do with it, it suddenly becomes clear that it’s a lot more than just the display that we initially started with when we were designing it.”
“我看到网上有人说它过度设计了，”Tennent 说，“但我认为，一旦他们拿到设备并了解它的真正用途，就会突然明白，它远不止是我们最初设计时所设想的那个显示屏那么简单。”
The idea came from Flipper founder Pavel Zhovner, who wanted a better way to indicate when he was occupied in the office. (Zhovner did not speak with WIRED for this story. He was probably busy.) Flipper says the device is open source and can easily be disassembled if parts need replacing. The Busy Bar already has a disassembly guide on the repair website iFixit.
这个想法源于 Flipper 的创始人 Pavel Zhovner，他想找一种更好的方式来表明自己在办公室里正忙。（Zhovner 没有接受《连线》杂志的采访，他可能确实在忙。）Flipper 表示，该设备是开源的，如果需要更换零件，可以轻松拆卸。Busy Bar 目前已经在维修网站 iFixit 上有了拆解指南。
“We were aware that everyone would try to hack us in every possible way,” says Aleksandr Semin, Flipper’s marketing specialist. “That’s the reason why we really pay a lot of attention to how secure and how reliable the systems are.”
“我们意识到每个人都会试图以各种可能的方式来‘黑’我们，”Flipper 的营销专家 Aleksandr Semin 说，“这就是为什么我们非常关注系统的安全性和可靠性。”