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You know that feeling when you're calling up some guy to cancel a date and you're thinking that you might be willing to sacrifice your first-born if only you could guarantee you'd get his voice-mail? Or perhaps you've been on a date or two with someone who's so nice but not the one and you just kind of want to let things peter out via a few missed calls rather than actually have to dump them. Or you've had a one-night stand with a good friend and you feel like you owe them a call rather than an email but you don't actually want to navigate the awkwardness of a live conversation. Or you promised a hook-up you'd call but you didn't mean to say it but you know it's lame to just disappear into thin air. Well, imagine if you could skip straight to voicemail and make it look like a missed call, so you're off the hook, as it were. A new technology called Slydial allows you to do just this--and all you have to do is listen to a few ads. Genius.

We can't believe this didn't exist back when we were single. Though then again, it would probably have just given us one more thing to obsess over: You get a sweet voicemail from some guy you like and all you can think is, "Did I really miss the call or did he just Slydial me?" We guess that every advance for the cowardly dater is a step backward for the insecure and brokenhearted. Here's a better idea: You're lying in bed with your brand new crush and you think how lovely it would be to sleep late and spoon rather than show up for work and file TPS reports. Don't actually call your boss and get trapped in a ten-minute call where you try to sound sick. Just Slydial the office and then turn off your phone for the day. Now that's the kind of high-tech progress we can get behind 100 percent.