Are you a jerk on the phone? You might want to be a bit nicer the next time you take that call.

Thats because theres new technology coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called the Jerk-O-Meter. The software measures stress levels in your voice and rates you on a scale of zero to 100 to let you know just how annoying you might be sounding.

Project leader Anmol Madan, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, said his wife came up with the product name as they were discussing his research on using speech patterns to measure interest in conversations.

The result is speech software that measures vocal activity and stress during a call and then translates that into a couple of actions. The group is also working on better reading empathy.

Now here is something to think about…Are you being a Jerk?

You might just want to consider this a little more carefully next time you are on the phone.

So how do you find out if you are a Jerk then continue reading this article from news.zdnet.com