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If you recall, at the end of last year, we first brought you word of MuteMe, a puck that functioned as a physical button that would light up green (when you’re unmuted) or red (when you’re muted). It’s a great physical indicator for you, and for anyone walking up. Well, they’ve been busy since then, and have come up with a new versio – the MuteMe Mini.
Rather than being a puck with a trailing cable (like the original is), the MuteMe Mini is a small USB dongle with a capacitive surface that wraps around it. That means you can tap it anywhere, and it’ll switch from muted to unmuted (or vice-versa). The LED is set inside, and glows out through the milky casing, still giving you that instant read on what your status is.
I like this because you’re not giving up any additional real estate, and it’ll be much simpler to leave the MuteMe Mini plugged into a laptop as you move around in your home or office. Sure, folks are thinking about returning to the office in a more regular capacity, but even so, it could still be handy. Even if you’re in the office, no doubt folks will be remote, or you may even have teams expanding into hybrid or fully remote configurations. At least from what I see, a device like this will be key, and help prevent some of those “oops” moments on calls.
The campaign for the MuteMe Mini is running until November 14, 2021, with shipping anticipated to occur in December. Earlybird pricing starts at $17 (with another $5 for shipping in the US), so it’s a fairly economical little solution. And you know, if you’re worried about having to reach to a port at the side of your machine, it would be fairly simple to get a USB-A extension cable setup. That is the one caveat here – this is USB-A only, though they are figuring out a USB-C version, it sounds like. Check out the fully-funded project over at kickstarter.com / muteme.com
