Does this ring a bell?

You?re chatting on your iPhone when suddenly you realize you?re supposed to meet a friend for a movie in 20 minutes. You get off the phone, change clothes, comb your hair and stop at the front door to put your shoes on. That's when the thought hits you:

Um, where's my phone?

So you backtrack and go to the closet, the dresser, and the bathroom. As you rush around the house like a crazy person, you spot something out of the corner of your eye, something shiny next to? the fridge? What the heck's it doing over there? Oh, right ? You were searching for a snack when you were on the phone.

Great. Mystery solved. And now you?re 10 minutes late.

Seriously, does this happen to you? It used to happen to me at least twice a week, when I got rid of my landline at my old apartment. Thanks to my complete and utter faith in cellular technology, I felt like a futurist going cell-only ? that is, until I lost my handset and couldn't call to locate it in my apartment. (Some of you know what I?m talking about: According to a recent study, one-fifth of all U.S. households are cell-only.)

I wish I?d had Beep My Cell back then.

The premise of BMC couldn't be simpler: You go online to BeepMyCell.com, hit ?Start Beeping,? and the service communicates with the application ? which uses push notifications to send constant sounds out from your phone. Once you locate it, just launch the app to make it stop.





A one-function program that's so easy, it's perfect. Well, almost perfect ? the beeps are tied to the phone's ringtone audio settings, which means it's only as loud as the ringer volume. Have it set too low, or in vibrate mode, and you?re out of luck.

Aside from that, Beep My Cell is a masterstroke of genius in its simplicity. (Don't think so? All it would take to convince you is needing something like this ? just once ? and not having it.) The service can save several man-hours of searching, which is priceless, and yet the app costs just 99 cents. Unbelievable. I would've paid way more.

Even if you only wind up using Beep My Cell once, it's well worth the price tag. It just launched in the App Store yesterday, so go there and grab it or just hit this link.