Album of inaudible animal sounds puts you inside the head of a bat

Even with fancy Hi-Fi equipment, the weak link is often our ears and their limited 20Hz-20,000Hz hearing range. As pointed out by Motherboard, artist Jane Winderen wants you to get a feeling for what it’s like to be a whale or bat with her new album, “Out of Range.” To do that, she used special equipment to record bat echolocation signals, marine vocalizing and other sub- and ultrasonic sounds from glaciers, oceans, and forests. From there, she slowed frequencies as high as 100KHz until they became audible, then mixed them with other exotic sounds that are within our hearing range. The end result (below) is hypnotic 40 minute recording of sounds that normally pass you right by.

Filed under: Science

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Via: Motherboard

Source: Jane Winderen

TuneIn tries reinventing itself as a social network for audio

What do you do to improve a service with over 50 million active users? Why, totally revamp it of course. It sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what TuneIn, an audio service that lets you listen to podcasts and radio stations from around the world, did. Before, TuneIn was more like a directory with a search engine. Now, it’s a full-blown audio network, which CEO John Donham says is the first of its kind.

“We have over a 100,000 radio stations and millions of on-demand programs, and that’s a good experience as long as you know what you’re looking for,” explains Donham to us. Unfortunately, however, discovering new content was a problem. There was no good indication as to what’s going on right now for all the stations that you were interested in, he said. The company launched a TuneIn Live feature some time last February to help amend the issue by letting you create a customized tile layout of favorite genres, but even that didn’t quite capture the ideal. “We wanted a way for all of your favorite stuff to accumulate for you all in one place.”

In the new TuneIn interface, that one place is now your “feed.” It’s sort of like a personal radio dial that you can populate with your favorite radio stations and shows. Think of it as Twitter, but for audio. The feed will update in real-time, showing you what’s playing and if there’s a new episode to a particular podcast, thus combining live and on-demand programming in a single view.

Further, just like on Twitter, each content provider can have its own TuneIn page that you can “follow” to get those updates. Some content providers, like radio stations, will list its entire repertoire of programming on their pages as well. Hundreds of brands are already on board and will have TuneIn pages ready at launch. They include ESPN Radio, NPR, the BBC, CBS Radio, The Wall Street Journal and even TV partners such as Sky News and CNN. In fact, according to Donham, TuneIn will be the only place you can listen to CNN for free.

“We know that some stations, such as KQED for example, have more listeners on TuneIn than followers on Twitter and Facebook combined,” said Kristin George, TuneIn’s VP of product. For them, she says, an audio-based network just makes more sense. To help that along, TuneIn also plans to roll out little social “Follow us on TuneIn” widgets that content providers can embed on their sites.

Aside from just following brands, you can also follow other TuneIn users. Similar to Rdio and Spotify, following your buddies helps you discover what sort of programs they’re into, and vice versa. To take it a step further, you can even send “Echos” of what you’re listening to and share it with your followers or to other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. You may also follow a music genre instead of a particular station — following the indie rock category, for example, will show all of the radio stations that have just started playing a new indie song.

Another key addition to TuneIn is a new Explore page that shows recommended shows, stations and genres. If you’re new to TuneIn, the page will just show what’s trending and popular. As you add more of them to your feed, however, the service will be smart enough to learn your behavior over time and will surface related content to the top. “We have all this popular content but we didn’t have a way to expose it to you,” said George. “Explore makes it sort of like an audio Netflix.”

The new TuneIn rolls out today to iOS, Android and the web.”This is a big change for us,” said George. “We had to completely redo everything.” Now it’s time to wait and see if the gamble was worth it.

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Source: TuneIn

Boeing’s commercial spaceliner takes cues from sci-fi

Look at the image above and choose one: a.) It’s the set of a new sci-fi movie. b.) It’s the mock-up of an actual spacecraft that’s currently a work in progress. The correct answer? It’s B — but then the headline / tweet that brought you here probably spoiled that. This is the updated Star Trek-like interior of Boeing’s CST-100 — a spacecraft the company’s developing for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program. Unlike the capsules and shuttles you see in documentaries, this design gets rid of panels and switches, adding in big windows, large screens and mood lighting instead. The airplane manufacturer likely plans to incorporate those design elements because while the vehicle’s meant to take astronauts to the ISS (like SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule), it might also carry wealthy private citizens as passengers. In fact, this updated design can seat up to 10 people instead of seven like Boeing originally envisioned. We’ll know by August of this year whether we’ll ever see the CST-100 on a launching pad, when NASA picks one or two companies it wants to continue with the project. If it does get picked, it might ferry people to space as soon as 2017.

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Via: ExtremeTech, Space

Source: Boeing

TinkerForge brings home automation to the masses with its DIY kit

Do you have some old 433MHz home automation gear lying around and fancy making your home a little smarter? TinkerForge is releasing a new internet of things controller designed to let you run power sockets, light fittings and even electric blinds from the comfort of your smartphone. The platform markets itself as a coding-free alternative to Arduino and Raspberry Pi, so building the control scheme online promises to be entirely safe for novices. If you snag the hardware before May 24th, then it’ll only set you back €50 ($70), after which the price will go up to €65 ($90), but that’s a small price to pay to really freak out your housekeeper.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Source: TinkerForge

Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 9:30PM ET

It’s Tuesday, which is time for the Engadget HD Podcast and we hope you’ll join us for the live recording at 9:30PM. Once again we lead off with the latest trials and tribulations of net neutrality, as a few more companies throw opinions into the mix. Of course we wouldn’t even be having such discussions if more ISPs offered gigabit broadband, which is exactly what Cox is hoping to do. WSJ is spreading a rumor that AT&T is looking to purchase DirecTV and as you know, we’ll never miss an opportunity to theorize about a good rumor. Later, we’ll toss around all the other latest news in home theater and entertainment until we finish u with what we’re watching this week. If you’ll be joining us, take a peek at the topics after the break and then get ready to participate in the live chat.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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