noise
Software
Sound Curtain Noise Masking iPhone App Hands On
10:30AM Jason Chen | Sound Curtain is a very, very simple noise masking app that works on the iPhone when you’re wearing a set of mic-enabled headphones. It performs much better than its $US0.99 price would imply. More »
Gadgets
2:17PM Nick Broughall | Our lives today are filled with the latest and greatest technology. Wherever we go, whatever we do, chances are there’s something in our immediate vicinity that runs off electricity or battery power – hell, for us geeks it’s practically sacrilege to leave the house without phones, laptops, MP3 players and digital cameras. But with this growing dependence and acceptance of gadgets as an extension of ourselves, somewhere along the line some of us forgot that we are still people, and still require to maintain a consideration for our fellow man or woman. After all, even though it is our ability to create and use gadgets that separates us from the animals, it is our ability to understand their social impact that makes us truly human. More »
We’d Like To Interrupt This Broadcast To Discuss Gadget Etiquette…
2:17PM Nick Broughall | Our lives today are filled with the latest and greatest technology. Wherever we go, whatever we do, chances are there’s something in our immediate vicinity that runs off electricity or battery power – hell, for us geeks it’s practically sacrilege to leave the house without phones, laptops, MP3 players and digital cameras. But with this growing dependence and acceptance of gadgets as an extension of ourselves, somewhere along the line some of us forgot that we are still people, and still require to maintain a consideration for our fellow man or woman. After all, even though it is our ability to create and use gadgets that separates us from the animals, it is our ability to understand their social impact that makes us truly human. More »
Robots
Lil Drum and Bass Bot Never Goes Anywhere Without His Theme Music
12:00PM Wilson Rothman | YouTube may be full of robots, but few as charming as this little drummer bot. Armed with a rudimentary pill-jar plastic drum and a beep-bop-boop synthesiser, he somehow gets quite the groove on.
Vehicles
Airbus A380s Interior Too Quiet, Eliminates Precious Privacy
12:40PM Wilson Rothman | The last bastion of privacy on airplanes is their blanket of white noise, but that may soon vanish: Pilots are complaining that the Airbus A380 jumbo is so quiet, they can’t get any rest. More »
Gadgets
Ecotones Adapts to Outside Sounds to Lull You to Sleep
5:45PM Gizmodo US Edition | Traditional sound machines tend to use white noise or repetitive nature sounds to compete with the cacophony of the outside, but that only works to a certain extent. Ecotones, by Silicon Valley start up ASTI, is hoping to one-up them by actually being able to adapt to the user’s environment. You can choose from 12 different SoundStories–including settings, I bet, like ocean or rainforest–that play at 18-bit quality, better than standard CDs. Audio backgrounds react to cues in the listening space and combine them with hundreds of “natural” sounds to make a soundscape that’s supposedly a lot more relaxing. It’s available through Hammacher Schlemmer for $US299. Wow, anything for a good night’s rest, I guess? [Hammacher] More »
Gadgets
Thingamakit DIY Synthesiser is Horribly, Wonderfully Noisy
9:25PM Gizmodo US Edition | Weird… but I kinda want to hear more. That’s roughly how I’d describe the sound output of the Thingamakit, a strange “noise monster” DIY synthesiser. I like the fact that it uses some sort of optical feedback: adjusting those tentacles affects how the sounds are generated, which then gets fed back to the LEDs in the tentacles. So it’s a pleasingly tactile gizmo, and if you’re really a strange-noise-machine-ophile, you’ll also appreciate that you can buy it as a kit from maker Bleep Labs. [Bleep Labs via Hackaday] More »
Toys
Sound Gadgets Get On Your Nerves When Darkness Falls
12:10AM Gizmodo US Edition | These little gadgets are perfect for really really annoying your house mates: flip one on and conceal it somewhere, and until it’s dark it does nothing. When the lights are off the fun starts, as the box starts to emit either the distant sounds of dripping water or a barking dog. Of course, your victim will turn the lights on to hunt down the problem, and the box falls silent. Brilliant. We love them, in a very seven-year-old kid amused by whoopee cushion and fart-powder kinda way. Available for about US$10 each. [Red Ferret] More »
Vehicles
1:18PM Nick Broughall | So you’ve gone out and bought yourself a shiny new hybrid car. How good is it? The fuel economy’s fantastic, the thing is whisper quiet and people stop to look at you in the street and think, “That person’s doing their part to save our planet”.
But what about the blind people? Did you ever stop to think about them? How they rely on the physical noise of a car to help them judge when it’s safe to walk on the road, and your new near-silent car is a death trap, enticing blind pedestrians to stroll directly into it eco-friendly maw?
Chances are you didn’t think about that, which is why the US National Federation of the Blind (or NFB, for short) is lobbying for makers of these new hybrid cars to install noise making devices, so blind people don’t have to worry about stepping in front of a silent killer.
There are currently bills pending approval in a number of US states,
and a taskforce has been setup to try and find a practical solution to
the problem. If it means that every hybrid car gets its own siren, then
I’m so getting one.
[CNet] More »
Hybrid Cars: Save the Environment or Risk Killing Blind People
1:18PM Nick Broughall | So you’ve gone out and bought yourself a shiny new hybrid car. How good is it? The fuel economy’s fantastic, the thing is whisper quiet and people stop to look at you in the street and think, “That person’s doing their part to save our planet”.
But what about the blind people? Did you ever stop to think about them? How they rely on the physical noise of a car to help them judge when it’s safe to walk on the road, and your new near-silent car is a death trap, enticing blind pedestrians to stroll directly into it eco-friendly maw?
Chances are you didn’t think about that, which is why the US National Federation of the Blind (or NFB, for short) is lobbying for makers of these new hybrid cars to install noise making devices, so blind people don’t have to worry about stepping in front of a silent killer.
There are currently bills pending approval in a number of US states,
and a taskforce has been setup to try and find a practical solution to
the problem. If it means that every hybrid car gets its own siren, then
I’m so getting one.
[CNet] More »
Hardware
Noise-Suppressing Mobile Chip Will Slay “Can You Hear Me Now?” Guy Forever
11:44PM Matt Buchanan | A new sand-grain-sized chip by Audience being demoed at MWC kills extraneous noise (better than current software-based suppression) so they can, even if it sounds like you’re skydiving at the time. Basically, this speck of silicon wonderment chills in between the mic and the phone’s circuitry, where it maps sound as a 3-D matrix, scraping away up to 25 decibels of garbage, leaving just your deep baritones or whiny squeal. Besides letting your singing voice come through the way it was meant to be heard, dumping the excess baggage saves bandwidth, giving stingy-ass network providers a reason to push for this thing as well. [NYT] More »
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