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March 18 2011
Weird App Morphs Music to Match the Picture on Your iPhone
Imagine flipping through pictures on your iPod as you listen to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, but instead of hearing the Fab Four’s familiar tune, something slightly different tickles your eardrums—and it changes with each snapshot. The tempo slows when you view a Rembrandt still life, the volume goes up with the blurred image of a headbanger, and creepy laughter resounds as you look upon a dark, moonlit landscape. This is more or less what a new iPod and iPhone software application aims to do, filtering and slightly modifying songs depending on what’s showing on your screen.
As Apple explained in a patent it published last week, they’ve developed an algorithm that looks at image data and determines “one or more characteristics,” such as “sharpness, brightness, motion, magnification, zoom setting,” and others. Next, an audio processor translates these photo observations into variations in tempo, volume, and pitch—adding its own sound effects to boot. The end result is a music experience that’s fully integrated with your photo album (and some would argue, as gratuitous, stupid, and insanely fun as Apple’s Photo Booth software). And it ...
September 22 2010
The Fruit That Hit Newton’s Head Is Down With the Fruit of Darwin’s Head
Apple may not allow porn on its product line, but it has no problem with another source of controversy: evolution. A new, free iPad/iPhone application called Timetree, distributed by Arizona and Penn State Universities, allows users to map how long ago two living creatures separated on the tree of life, a subject that can get a bit sticky with creationists, says The Register:
Now, Apple has taken a stance which will upset a lot of Americans: it has allowed an app which specifies quite clearly that evolution is real and that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor some 30 million years in the past.
Querying the Timetree application accesses a vast database of data, the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s comprehensive taxonomy browser, which contains information on more than 160,000 organisms. Timetree even provides you with the publications relating to these connections, which can sometimes disagree with each other but, which The Register has discovered, all happily ignore creationism:
As far as our user tests have been able to determine, Timetree does not reveal one disagreement regarding evolution which is now becoming prominent in US politics: namely the issue of whether or not evolution actually happens or has happened. Religious hardliners on the American right are known for espousing the view that actually it doesn’t and didn’t, and that the various species were all created by God during one week just a few thousand years ago.
And while the information contained in the Timetree database may not provide credence to the creationists’ stance, the ability to see current clashes in the field is an important part of investigating the science of evolution, Sudhir Kumar, who helped develop the project, told the Penn State press office:
“One of the most important things about this knowledge base,” Kumar said, “is that it makes it possible for anyone to see the current agreements and disagreements in the field — immediately.”
The same functionality is available though the Timetree website, and more information can be found in the free e-book, The Time Tree of Life ,the downloadable poster (both available at the Timetree website) and in the paper documenting how Timetree works. But you don’t need all that documentation. If it’s in the app store, it must be right!
Related content:
Discoblog: An iPhone App, a Refractometer, an Objectively Perfect Cup of Coffee
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Discoblog: iPhone App Lets You Tell Drivers Exactly What You Think of Them
Discoblog: Can an iPhone App Clear up Your Acne?
Discoblog: NASA iPhone App Lets You Drive a Lunar Rover (Just Try Not to Get Stuck)
Bad Astronomy: Three iPhone science apps
The Loom: Google Earth for The Tree of Life
Image: Penn State Department of Public Information
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