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."

Posted on Monday, Jan 18, 2010 by Jeremy Sikora

Do you have dreams of being the next Spielberg but the only video camera you own is your trusty iPhone 3GS? If this is the case you can now rest easy as Tiffen recently introduced the Smoothee Steadicam. The Smoothee utilizes a counterweight construction in the same fashion all other professional models work, just expect this to be a whole lot cheaper.

This accessory is not going to fit in your pocket or purse but we are positive some of our creative readers could put it to good use. No release date or price are available at the moment but you can see it in action after the break!

[Via Engadget]

 

Jennifer Van Grove

Qualcomm’s FLO TV will unveil a Mophie plastic-case that brings live TV programming to the iPhone at CES. The new case will include a FLO TV antenna to work in conjunction with a FLO TV iPhone app to stream live content from broadcast and cable networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN, Nickelodeon, and MTV.

Essentially the Qualcomm and Mophie partnership means that — for a fee — your iPhone will double as a mobile television set. Silicon Alley Insider speculates that the FLO TV service will likely retail for $9 a month on the iPhone. As for the case itself, there’s no word on price point yet, but we expect it to be similar in price to Mophie’s popular Juice Pack Air, which retails for $79.95.

Mophie, once strictly a maker of accessories for the iPhone and iPod touch, has been expanding its product offering of late. Not only is it powering the case that will evolve the iPhone into something more than it is today on a television front, but its also doing the same in the mobile payment space as well.

On the flip side, Qualcomm has been actively trying to push FLO TV programming, especially with Verizon V Cast, and transition it from a niche pleasantry to a consumer-demanded mainstream necessity. The company has even gone so far as to release a single-purpose FLO TV device offering live and time-shifted TV content via a dedicated multicast network on a device that is slightly bigger than iPhone.

Qualcomm’s foray into iPhone technology, however, could prove to be FLO TV’s biggest catalyst yet. If the iPhone can’t make FLO TV a hit with mobile consumers, then nothing can.

by Steven Sande on Jan 2nd 2010 at 4:30PM

Everyone knows about the struggles US mobile phone company AT&T has had with keeping its network up to speed given the huge bandwidth requirements of the popular iPhone. Well, they're not the only mobile carrier having issues.

In the UK, O2 has been having problems with the huge amount of data being schlepped around the network by iPhones. O2 CEO Ronan Dunne told the Financial Times that performance of the O2 network had been disappointing since this summer and that the company was trying to cope with the increasing number of mobile apps running on devices such as the iPhone. TUAW reported a multi-day data outage that affected O2 users just a few weeks ago.

Most of the issues have been confined to London, so the company is installing 200 additional base stations to support the increased levels of traffic. Dunne also noted that the company is working with Apple, RIM, and other handset manufacturers to learn more about which applications are causing the heavy demands on the O2 network. O2 has been working with Nokia Siemens Networks to modify the network infrastructure to better handle the combination of voice and data traffic.

While trying to iron out these issues, it appears that O2's parent company, Telefonica, is making moves that could place further demands on the network. Telefonica purchased mobile VoIP company Jajah to add to O2's portfolio of services, and VoIP services are notorious devourers of bandwidth.

In the United States, Verizon can smirk about AT&T's network issues, but O2's problems point out that no mobile operator is immune from the bandwidth-eating apps that are popular on the iPhone platform.

Good news, everyone! Our very own iPhone / iPod touch app is finally really available in Apple's much talked about and critically acclaimed App Store! That's right, all the excitement and info you've come to know and love from Engadget is now bottled in an easy to digest and delicious iPhone form. The application -- easily downloadable from your device or iTunes -- features a whole bunch of useful features such as offline viewing, built in streaming for The Engadget Show, in-app tipping (you know, for when you see the next iPhone), and all kinds of customization options. You can download the app right here, or click on the image above.

Even better than this? We've got more apps on the way! Before CES (fingers crossed), you should see both a BlackBerry and webOS version of the Engadget application, and plans for the Android version are already in motion.

Lastly, a big, big, big thanks to the team at AOL that actually made this thing a reality: Sun Sachs, Andy Averbuch, Hareesh P, Anibal Rosado, Rajesh Kumar, Rich Foster, Claudeland Louis, Mike Wolstat, Eric Wedge, Vikas B R, Asha Indira and Bob Gurwin. You guys rule.

Cory Doctorow released his new book Makers under a Creative Commons license and so I decided to use it as a further experiment with my iPhone software for books. This is a very simple tool that builds upon Vladimir Olexa's CiUI framework by adding some simple paging features. All it takes is a tap to the bottom or top of the screen to advance one page or go back.

Click Here to Read It

Some features:

• This web based version doesn't require Apple to sign off of the book, something that's a big pain. ( See here. )
• Paging takes just a tap of the finger. Tap on the bottom to scroll down. Tap on the top to scroll up.
• I can update this quickly with bug fixes. Write me if you have thoughts or suggestions. (p3 at-sign wayner dot org)
• You can install this as an icon on the main panel of your iPhone by just clicking the plus key at the bottom. There's a custom icon and a nice splash page with a classic image from James Wright of Derby.

Instructions for installing are below the break. Click through to read them.

Step 1:

Go to the right page.

Step 2:

Check out a page with some text.

Step 3:

Click on the plus key to add it to your home screen. Then click on the "Add to Home Screen" Button.

Step 4:

Choose a name. "Makers" is pretty good.

Step 5:

Then see the icon. Clicking on this will open up the page in full screen mode giving you a few extra lines of text. You now get a fancy splash screen.

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".

by Steven Sande on Dec 9th 2009 at 5:00PM

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), an Amazon.com company, has just released a free iPhone app [iTunes Link] that puts the power of the huge repository of movie facts, fables, and trivia into the palm of your hand.

I use IMDb regularly, so when I saw that the app had been released, I downloaded it immediately. Upon launching, the app will ask if you wish to let it use your location -- this is used to display show times and movies for local theaters. While IMDb doesn't exactly have a beautiful interface, it's perfect for navigating the huge amount of information that is available.

The first page of the app displays three major areas: Movies, TV, and People. There's also an Application area, which is used only to display information about the App. Movies is subdivided into Showtimes, Coming Soon, US Box Office Results, MOVIEmeter, and the Top 250 Movies. Tapping Coming Soon brings up details about upcoming movies releases, including trailers that can be viewed on the phone. I love the Top 250 Movies, which is a list of the movies rated highest by IMDb readers. It's a treasure trove of information about many of the classic movies of all time.

IMDb's TV section is split into US TV Tonight, which is a schedule of upcoming shows on the major networks, and US TV Recaps, which provides full text synopses of what has happened on top TV shows during the previous week. Under the People heading, there's both STARmeter, which shows a listing of the top 25 stars as measured by the number of times that they've been searched for on IMDb, and Born Today, which lists actors (living and dead) who were born on the current day.

If you love movies and TV, or searching trivia about roles, actors, and directors, then you probably already spend a lot of time with IMDb. The iPhone app is just the icing on the IMDb cake, and as a free app it should be on the home screen of every movie fan's iPhone. Check out the gallery for screenshots of IMDb in action.