Translating Babies' Cries -- a Better Bowlingual?
from the And-He-Just-Missed-The-Ig-Nobel dept
A Spanish inventor claims to have invented a device that will decipher todlers' cries so as to tell parents what's up. This has a slightly larger market than our Ig Nobel-winning favorite product, the dog translator, bowlingual. Side note: if any of our readers can figure out how I can get my hands on one in late February '03, I'd appreciate it!
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
One thing I've learned above all else is that every baby is different. My daughter won't sit still for more than a few minutes, she's constantly wanting to play or look at things or movie around. My cousin is almost the same age, and is content to just sit back and look around, never needing to really move or be entertained. Also, my daughter doesn't cry when she has a wet/dirty diaper. It just doesn't bother her I guess, so there's no cry to associate with that.
I imagine there are certain characteristics of a cry that can be classified a little bit--volume, pitch, duration, whether it's short or long sobs, etc. But most of these are only relative to the baby's other cries. My daughter has a heck of a set of lungs, so her little "I'm bored" whimper is louder than my cousin's "I just hurt myself" wail. So unless this device uses some type of learning logic that you train, it wouldn't work very well.
[ link to this | view in thread ]