New App Translates Baby's Cries

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor

posted: 21 January 2010 02:58 pm ET

Next time your baby cries, you might want to hold the little one up to your iPhone. A new app could translate those yells into adult-speak, telling you whether it's a cry for food or perhaps a nap.

After 10 seconds of crying, the Cry Translator (patented by Biloop Technologic, S.L.) will light up one of five icons to indicate, the company claims, whether your baby is hungry, tired, bored, sleepy, stressed, or in some kind of discomfort.

While you might think the cry decoder is as valid as having a conversation with your dog or cat, some research suggests there is meaning behind those wails.

For instance, scientists have found the pitch and frequency of a baby's cries can indicate health problems and even the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), according to research published in 2005 in the journal Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.

Other more recent research has shown the cries of newborns already bear the mark of the language their parents speak. For instance, one study showed French newborns cry with rising melody patterns, slowly increasing in pitch from the beginning to the end, while German newborns have falling melody patterns, both of which are consistent with their prospective languages. That suggests infants are already picking up bits of language in the womb.

And while newborns may not have language for some time, pediatricians have known they cry to communicate.

"Babies do cry; it's their main form of communication," said pediatrician Jamie A. Freishtat, adding that over time parents tend to figure out what certain cries mean. "I know that anecdotally a lot of parents, after time, say, 'Ah she must be wet,' by a certain cry. I think pain [is something] parents tend to pick up on."

That "I'm in pain" cry could be higher pitched or more shrill, said Freishtat, who is also a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Even so, all babies sound different, just like adults. "I'm not sure if you had ten babies and they were all hungry if you would get the same cry from each baby," Freishtat told LiveScience.

The Web site set up for the new baby-cry app acknowledges the variability of cries, explaining that rather than tone or pitch, the technology relies on some kind of pattern in the cries.

The company cautions, however, that the technology is meant to help parents and caregivers understand what their infant is trying to communicate and is not a stand-in for a medical doctor.

Freishtat echoed this caution: "Regardless of how a parent is trying to interpret his or her baby's cry, if a baby is ever crying inconsolably (won't stop regardless of interventions, such as offering a feed, changing a diaper, holding the baby, etc.) then it is very important to contact or go to the doctor immediately because that can mean there is something more serious going on."

Plenty of publishers have jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, but the latest is Playboy - a surprise, given that a ban on nudity seems to be about the only rule that Apple seems to enforce consistently. That means the Hugh Hefner is having to make do without the naked women for the iPhone edition of his monthly magazine. Spokesperson Theresa Hennessey told Krapps.com that "the pictures are all non-nude or cropped".

On Thursday  WolframAlpha launched its developer API, which should allow large and small developers (as well as businesses and educational institutions) to harness the power of the computational knowledge engine to enhance their own applications or products. Today, the WolframAlpha iPhone app (iTunes link) — which was built using the new API — was released to the App Store.

The application is pretty advanced, as its $49.99 price-tag suggests. Before your jaw drops over the price, keep in mind that this is much more than just a mobile version of the website. It’s a high end graphing calculator (that supports discrete number theory, Calculus derivative and plotting of functions), an almanac, a currency/unit converter and a pretty sophisticated stock analysis tool. And that’s just the beginning.

High Powered Proof of Concept

The buzz over Wolfram Alpha has always centered around its potential. After all, combining statistical, factual and scientific information with human-language requests is an impressive feat. However, actually showcasing the use cases for that potential has been difficult.

With the Wolfram Alpha iPhone app, the company has not only showed off what is capable with the API, but it has delivered a very good example of what is possible with the ever-increasing data engine that backs Wolfram Alpha’s core.

For instance, check out this query from the Wolfram Alpha iPhone app. Here, I typed in “MSFT vs. apple vs. IBM” and what I get back is a very high-level comparison of the companies’ financial data. Stock price, overall market cap, P/E ratios and graphs showing off revenue and stock performance are displayed quickly and in a very, very readable way.

All of this data was available in a few seconds, which is much faster than the time it would take to create these charts in a spreadsheet or to try to track down pre-made comparison data.

Examples

Music, Film and Book Data

Entering in  song titles can bring up who wrote the song, its history on the music charts, associated acts and other information. Presently, the song database seems pretty limited to older songs (I had very little luck with newer material), but the information is interesting and accurate. Check out “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles:

Films and books work the same way. Entering in film title will bring up the release date, estimated gross (not-adjusted for inflation), cast and crew information and more. If there are multiple queries that answer a certain question (for instance, “Fight Club” is both a book and a film), you can choose what information you want to see.

Historical Date Information

Entering in specific date can bring up a wealth of information. For instance, I entered in my birthday, November 12, 1982, and this is what I got back:

I can even get the sunrise and sunset data from my current location (which also happens to be the location where I was born), which is interesting information.

Mortgage Calculations

The Wolfram Alpha iPhone app has one of the best mortgage calculators I’ve ever used. You can enter in the amount of your loan, your interest rate and the time on your loan and get a breakdown of your monthly payment, total amount of interest paid and total paid for the house. You can also choose an adjustable-rate mortgage and control the loan or sale amount and other options like taxes, balloon payment info and an interest-only period.

Then, Wolfram Alpha runs a mortgage simulation showing what different low, medium or high interest rate scenarios (for an adjustable-rate mortgage), for instance.

These aren’t difficult calculations, but seeing everything visualized in charts and tables makes the information much more digestible. Plus, entering in a query like “$200k mortgage at 5% for 40 yrs” is much easier than having to do all the calculations by hand.

Who Needs a Graphing Calculator When You Have an iPhone?

The mathematical functions of the Wolfram Alpha app are in a league of their own. When the Wolfram team told me that the app could replace a graphing calculator, I was a bit skeptical, because I have experience using high-end $150+ calculators in high school and college, and I wasn’t sure that the data output would be as robust.

I was wrong. For students who already have an iPhone or iPod touch who need a graphing calculator for a high school or college math class — this $50 iPhone app might just save you money and give you more options (but make sure you can use it in class and that you have an Internet or data connection available to you).

Check out some of these examples:

Scratching the Surface

These examples only scratch the surface of what the Wolfram Alpha iPhone app can do. The application can display demographic and census information, population data, do unit conversions, solve Physics and Chemistry equations and provide information on chemical compounds, and even show domain information.

The fact that all of this is powered by Wolfram Alpha’s knowledge engine is pretty amazing. We knew this thing had potential, but wow!

Who This App is Aimed At

At $50, this app is not for everyone. From my uses, students in advanced math classes (I would have killed for this in high-school and I had a TI-89, which was the super-calculator of its time), people who do lots of data analysis, financial analysts (really analysts of almost any kind) are the most likely to find this application useful. The mathematical and scientific information is really outstanding and it’s pretty mind-blowing the sorts of data you can extrapolate and the sorts of information that you can get back.

Ultimately, this app showcases the very real potential Wolfram Alpha has. Whether that potential will ever be useful in an everyday way to consumers, I’m not sure — but to me, it seems clear that the underlying technology could make a great asset to a variety of products and services.

I like the look of this!  But the £30 price tag is a bit steep...

Just downloaded this - it looks quite interesting.

Aug 31, 02:16 AM

After 26 days of waiting, SimplyTweet 2.2 has been rejected.

The reason? - "We will not post applications that reference other applications in their search criteria." The keyword? "Tweeter".

(Keywords are a recently added field that let developers specify keywords that are associated with their apps so they can be found when users search for those keywords)

It's not like I am trying to do an SEO by dumping the whole list of Twitter apps there. I honestly think many people refers to people who use Twitter as tweeters. And what is most frustrating? It took 26 days to tell me this.

For existing users of SimplyTweet, I'm awfully sorry. You'll have to wait some more for the new features and bug fixes in SimplyTweet 2.2 to be available. I'm almost finishing work on 2.3 and can't wait to make it available. That, unfortunately can only be done after 2.2 is approved.

Apple, if you need to know how to improve your process so that it benefits our common users, developers and yourself, please read: Joe Hewitt's Innocent Until Proven Guilty and Craig Hockenberry's Year two.

Wake up Apple.

This really is ridiculous. Everybody calls people who tweet "tweeters", but I suspect far fewer have heard of an App called Tweeter (I certainly hadn't until I read this).

Does nobody review App Store rejections before they're issued?

I love Facebook and this is a preview of the hotly anticipated  Facebook for iPhone 3.0, coming soon to the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod touch.

Where to begin? When I first installed the app, I was frozen with anticipation. I have seen some sneak peeks on Facebook’s app page, but that was it. Now with it in my hands… Let’s begin by looking at the basics.

Home Screen

Facebook 3.0 has a brand-new redesigned home screen (see above). From here, you have access your fundamental Facebook actions such as your News Feed, Profile, Friends, Inbox, Chat, Requests, Events, Photos, Notes and Search. Notifications have been relocated to a very accessible location on the bottom of the screen that tells you the last notification you have received and the total number of new notifications. Tapping this bar brings up a notification list that is practically identical to the notifications list you have on the Web Browser. You can also tap the title bar at the top of the page to return home any time. For example, if you are commenting on a post and you are done, you can tap the word “Comments” at the top of the page and it will return you to the home screen. Tap again, and it takes you back to your comment. Nice.

New Feed

The News Feed has several new features. For starters you can now “like” posts! Yes, you now have the ability to comment and like a post on Facebook for iPhone (you can also unlike too). You can also add a video (with a 3GS) and record and upload directly to Facebook from your iPhone. If a post has a Web link in it, the link will now open within Facebook to view the Web Page. You no longer have to leave the app to go to Safari, through this is an option if you want.

If you separate your friends and paged into different lists, these have also carried over into Facebook 3.0. You can easily and quick access your News Feed, Links, Pages and more from one spot.

Profile

Your Facebook Profile is now here in it’s entirety! Profile pages are divided into three sections : Wall, Info and Photos. Wall remains relativity unchanged, however, Info gives you a lot of information now. For instance,  when viewing another persons profile, you can see how many friends you have in common, their number of total friends and what Pages they are a fan of. Clicking on any of these choices will take you to that list. From their profile you can also send them a message, Poke them and add as a favorite on your home screen! That is right, the home screen can also be customized with your favorite friends or pages!

Friends

This section contains your typical listing of friends, but now if they have their phone number in Facebook, you are given an icon to tap next to their name. When tapped, it will display quick links for their numbers. Example: Land, Mobile, SMS. Very nice if you don’t have every single friend in your address book, this is an excellent replacement! You also have your Pages here too. This is a great, quick way to access the pages you are a fan of.

Inbox

The Inbox remains relatively unchanged except for the added option of Updates for your pages. If a Page uses this feature and you have it activated, you will see your favorite Page updates in the Inbox too under its own section.

Chat

Chat is another section that has not altered too much from Facebook 2.0. One of the new feature is the Online/Idle icons next to your friends so you know their status.

Requests

Not much here, any pending friend requests you have will appear on this button of the home screen with the red badge number of pending requests.

Events

New to Facebook 3.0, events have a simple scrolling list of upcoming and past events. When you tap on an event, you enter your RSVP and see a guest list broken down into Confirmed, Maybe, Declined and Awaiting. Very nice. Do you also enjoy the Birthday feature of Facebook on your desktop that shows you when your friends have a Birthday? Well, Birthdays have been added to Events as well! Click on the Events tab and you have a whole list of your friends Birthdays divided by month.

Photos

Photos in Facebook 3.0 have had a big change. First, when you tap an album, you get a page of thumbnails like the Photos app on the iPhone. This makes it a lot easier to find photos or get an overview of an album. You can now very easily show or hide tags. Previously, it seemed that tags would appear randomly, now it is much easier. You can Like and make a photo a profile picture right from Photos!

Notes

New to the mix of Facebook 3.0 apps is Notes. When you tap on Notes, you get a listing of all of your notes on Facebook. You can edit notes and create new ones. I was curious about the note creation process on the iPhone and decided to enter some basic HTML to format my note, just like on the desktop. Know what? IT WORKED! That is right, you can add basic HTML tags to your notes and it will format the note accordingly. The only thing missing is the ability to attach a photo to your note. This new feature has me debating whether I should bother with my own traditional personal blogging and just blog from within Facebook… we are almost there…

Search

Searching from the home screen gives you a few filters. You can search for Friends, Everyone or Pages. Typing in a name for Friends and Everyone behaves as you would expect, but the new ability to add pages is really awesome. I am using Facebook more and more for product, news and general “fan” updates. This new feature is really convenient.

Posting

Posting has one of my biggest grips addressed from the previous version of Facebook; the “Send” button (renamed to Share) has been moved to the TOP of the screen so I no longer post accidentally while typing!

Add a Favorite

Lastly, from the home screen you can add your favorite friends and pages to the home screen. You can flick to the left just like the iPhone home screen and have quick access to you the people you care about the most.

Issues and Conclusion

This is one phenomenal update to Facebook for iPhone, however, it is not without its shortcomings. To name a few, you receive an error message when you try to play a video that has been uploaded to Facebook. The error reads “Facebook Video cannot yet be played on this device”. Not sure what that means, but it tells me that it will be coming in s future update. If you have posted a YouTube video to Facebook though, it will open YouTube’s site in the Facebook app and you can watch the video.

I have also encountered the infamous ”Error, Your comment could not be posted at this time” message. I had thought this was resolved in the last version of Facebook. I have not seen this error for quite some time.

Overall, I could not be happier. This version of Facebook is leaps and bounds better then version 2.0. The developer, Joe Hewitt, deserves kudos for his work her. Joe has also promised push notifications and other enhancements for 3.1 to be released later this year.

The promise of the iPhone is to have a mobile computer in your pocket. The iPhone is able to deliver on this promise because there are developers out there like Joe Hewitt that keep making apps better and better. Thank you Joe.