What ten sounds are most likely to make you react?

Enviado el 02/03/2010 @ 12:55 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

At Fast Company, Author Martin Lindstrom writes about an informal study conducted by his company Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts, a New York-based "sound identity company," to explore which sounds would most reliably cause involuntary responses in listeners. "Baby giggle," demonstrated so effectively by the little duderino in the video above, was number one on the list. Among branded sounds, the "Intel sound" was tops. Neuromarketers, listen up:

[We] wired up 50 volunteers and measured their galvanic, pupil, and brainwave responses to sounds using the latest neuroscience-based research methods. We learned that sound has remarkable power. This may not be surprising for many, but it was certainly surprising to realize just how many commercial brands over the past 20 years have made their way into the world's 10 most powerful and addictive sounds--beating some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature.

The 10 Most Addictive Sounds in the World (via PSFK)

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What’s The Greenest Insulation?

Enviado el 26/02/2010 @ 15:20 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

Sometimes I get it wrong in this gig, but rarely have I been so consistent as I have been in my coverage of Ultratouch Recycled Denim Insulation. I had to retract about half my post in Planet Green, when I complained that shipping old jeans all over the country wasn't exactly green; Bonded Logic, the manufacturer, contacted me to say no, it is almost all post-industrial scrap from factories, diverting 300 tons of it from the landfill every month. Campaigns like tho... Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Massive Arduino-and-solenoid percussion array controlled by a Wiimote

Enviado el @ 2:39 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

Patrick Flanagan is a one-man band who performs under the name "Jazari," with a giant, elaborate, solenoid-and-Arduino-driven percussion range that's controlled by Wiimote, letting him conduct it like a mad wizard as it whirls and thunders. And the music is fully rockin'.

JAZARI (via Beyond the Beyond)

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Acoustapus: glowing found-object octopus sculpture

Enviado el 25/02/2010 @ 13:08 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

Artist Nemo Gould is selling this stupendous octo-sculpture he made out of a found guitar and other bits: "The sculpture hovers off the wall about six inches allowing the florescent bulbs installed within to bathe the wall with green light."

Acoustapus 2010 (44" x 51" x 20") (via Super Punch)

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Sounds from space

Enviado el @ 12:00 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

If you've read our feature story up today about NASA's Cassini space probe, then you know about Don Gurnett, a University of Iowa scientists whose research includes recording and analyzing sound waves from space.

You can listen online to some of Gurnett's favorite space sounds—including a Dawn Chorus recorded from Earth's radiation belt—and watch animations that pair the sound with spectrogram visualizations of the waves. Very cool stuff!

Image courtesy Flickr user Gidzy, via CC

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Librivox free audiobook publisher fundraising drive

Enviado el @ 10:38 por ppriede • Categoria Google Reader • Comentarios desactivados

Hugh sez, "LibriVox, makers of free public domain audiobooks, has launched a fund-raising campaign to help pay for servers and other sundry costs. LibriVox is the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world, putting out 75-100 books a month, all free, all public domain, all volunteer-read. The catalog currently stands at 3,179 books, in 29 languages."

They're after $20K, to pay for the servers, a site redesign, and a new back-end, and they say it'll last them for three years. I love the Librivox catalog, and this sounds like a good investment in its future. I kicked in $100.

We're asking for donations for the following:

• to cover hosting costs for our website (about $5,000/year)*, which includes:
  • the site you are reading now;
  • the forum;
  • the wiki;
  • the catalog;
  • a whole lot of back-end software to host and process audio before it goes to the Internet Archive
  • but does NOT include hosting audio files which is done by Archive.org
• to redesign the site and improve its accessibility
• to make the LibriVox catalog easier for listeners to use
• to make the management software easier for admins to use

We expect this fund-raising drive to sustain us for three years at least.

LibriVox Needs Your Help (Thanks, Hugh!)

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