This technology could have some interesting uses for a variety of
fields/disciplines.
-- rick
Why Lady Gaga Deploys a Sound Only Your Smartphone Can Hear
• By Eliot Van Buskirk
• Email Author
• February 7, 2012 |
• 3:13 pm |
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/sonic-notify/
The SonicNotify app can trigger interactive content when it “hears” an
ultra-high-frequency tone.
Audio tags are looking more and more like the new QR code — not only are they
way less ugly than those jagged black-on-white squares, but you don’t need to
take a picture of anything in order for them to work. (See also: Shazam and the
Super Bowl.)
A startup called SonicNotify embeds inaudibly high-pitched audio signals within
music or any other audio track. When a compatible app hears that signal, it
triggers any available smartphone function to link you to websites, display
text, bring up map locations, display a photo, let you vote on which song a
performer plays next and so on.
SonicNotify was developed with help from Cantora Records + Labs, which made its
name by funding (for $400, initially) and releasing the band MGMT‘s massively
popular records. As part of its newly minted technology division, Cantora,
which is also a record label and publishing company, is offering $25,000 to
$100,000 to promising startups, among the first of which is SonicNotify.
Lady Gaga used its technology on her Monster Ball tour, and Coachella and other
events are next in line. To interact via SonicNotify, fans can use any
SonicNotify-enabled app. If you want to see it in action now, you can do so
with the official Sonic Experiences app.
“[SonicNotify] transmits a high-frequency sound wave through speakers — we
can’t hear the frequency but smartphones can hear it, so we’re able to unlock
content at live events, TV shows and through the web,” said Jesse Israel,
co-founder of Cantora Records + Labs, at NYC Music Tech Meetup. “We’ve closed
deals with Lady Gaga for The Monster Ball Tour, we’re doing Coachella, we’re
doing stuff for Fashion Week next week powering 32 stages, college sports,
partnerships with Twitter and Spotify — so it’s kind of a cool example of how
we’re able to put pieces together and help a technology get off the ground.”
Buyers and journalists with the app installed at Fashion Week will be zapped an
image of each model the instant they step onto the catwalk so they can examine
the outfits up-close, in real time. Similarly impressive capabilities exist
within the music realm. Best of all, the audience doesn’t even need to be
actively running the app in order for it to pick up on those inaudible signals.
“With Sonic, we can unlock anything that your iPhone or Android can do, as long
as the SonicNotify SDK is built into an app that’s running in the background on
your phone,” explained Israel. “For example, some of the stuff we’re doing with
Gaga is when she is performing, mid-set, everyone in the arena gets a
notification which lets them choose which song she plays for her encore.”
Location is also a part of this, because each speaker in a venue can transmit a
different tone, opening up new possibilities for live concert participation
along the lines of what we saw with inConcertApp.
“We can also target sections through radius with frequencies, so we can have
Section C’s phones turn into purple hearts, while Section F on the other side
of the arena has red squares,” added Israel.
According to Israel, Cantora’s basic idea is that app developers are not unlike
bands, in that they might have all the skills in the world, but those skills
don’t amount to much unless they are properly deployed. The company is
currently working with SonicNotify and two other startups, and it plans to fund
eight to 10 in total over the next two years.
---
Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.
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