My new pocket pc has a feature (that most cellphones have these day) that allows you to attach an image to a contact. When that contact then calls, you see the image.

I took some pictures of friends and attached them to their contacts, making jokes about the feature and about how stupid and "bells and whistle"y it is.

To my shame, I have found out that this image queueing is much more effective in conveying who it is who's calling. Not a big deal - the difference between recognizing a name and a picture is probably a second or a second and a half. But still, I did not expect it to have any real difference at all.

Now I have to take back all those times I was saying "Look what a stupid feature my phone has". I hate being wrong.