Where on Earth is this freaky lava pool? Why do people hate love locks? Is it true that fire ants love the suburbs? And what do the soon-to-be-lost sounds of the industrial age sound like? All your answers are here, in this week’s landscape reads!
Birds singing, frogs croaking, animals walking, the sound of rain hitting trees, ponds, and the wet soil—if you listen to this video with your headphones you would believe you’re listening to the recording of a rainforest. But the truth is that you’re listening to space:
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Turbines are huge, intricate, beautiful machines. And if you drop something inside of them, they double as musical instruments. But as YouTuber AgentJayZ demonstrates, the delightful xylophone sound that makes is actually horrible.
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You know what’s missing from technology these days? Sound. We have noises but no sound. We open our laptops and we’re automatically connected to Wi-Fi. Our phones only squeak for alerts, they don’t provide a soundtrack for the future. The old dial up modem handshake though? Now that was real sound. That was like hearing technology happen. This is what that sound looks like. This is something your kids will never know.
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Hello. Hola. Bonjour. Ni Hao. We all say things differently because each language has their own words. Like, duh. But what about how different languages think animals sound? We’re not exactly saying words as much as we are simply enunciating simple sounds and yet, different languages have their own take on each animal sound too.
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Our smartphones these days can perform an amazing amount of tasks that would blow away what we thought possible 20 years ago. But a New York City-based company is looking towards a future where our smartphones are able to know where we are in a store as well as deliver special offers just from listening to the environment.
Sonic Notify has developed an audio watermarking technology that can be picked up by your smartphone that will make it possible for such scenarios to be carried out like receiving a welcome message the moment you walk into a store or receive information when you’re standing in an aisle in relation to where you are that will help in your product purchase. The technology can also be used in TV commercials or shows to deliver special offers or make a note you’ve watched a specific commercial. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Twitter Music iOS App Currently Available For ‘Influencers’, BBM Music Calls It A Day, 
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I’ve found your new favorite website: Funswitcher.com. It has pretty much every sound known to mankind. From TV show theme songs like Community and Buffy, to video games sounds like Super Mario Star. Hell it even has sounds for having an orgasm and your favorite memes. You will lose hours to this website and you will not regret it. [Fun Switcher via The Awesomer] More »
It’s a common trope in cartoons, but in the real world, you just can’t get a bottle to hold sound. And what kid hasn’t tried? No verbal messages in a bottle for us, thanks to the laws of physics. At least, that used to be the case. The Re: Sound Bottle designed by Jun Fujiwara does exactly that. More »
Facebook often tests out experimental features on a small sliver of its billion users before rolling it out to the rest of the world. Today, it’s notification sounds. It’s awful. Please, please let this remain a bad experiment. More »
Technologies like NFC, RFID and QR codes are quickly becoming a normal part of everyday life, and now a group from
It’s easy to see how smartphones could take advantage of this — not that we recommend dragging your new iPhone over ridged surfaces — but unlike the technologies mentioned earlier, not all potential applications envisage a personal reading device. Dot barcodes around an area, install the sound processing hardware on site, and you’ve got yourself an interactive space primed for breaking freshly manicured nails. We’re pretty impressed by the simplicity of the concept, and the team does a good job of presenting scenarios for implementing it, which you can see in the video below. And, if you’d like to learn a little more about the idea or delve into the full academic paper, the source links await you.
[Thanks, Julia]
Continue reading Acoustic barcodes store data in sound, go on just about anything (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Alt
Acoustic barcodes store data in sound, go on just about anything (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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