Friday, January 20, 2006

Query-by-HUMMING Song Database!!

AWESOME!!

IIT-B Digital Audio Processing Lab (DAPLab) has a song database that is queried by HUMMING a tune! A god-send for music enthusiasts with a bad memory, like myself.

I wonder how this could be extended...? What if you could just say a few words that appear in a song you somewhat remember, without a tune, and it could retreive all songs that have those words in it? The database should not have to contain lyrics to all songs though. When adding a song into the database, you just upload the audio. The system 'listens' to it and extracts a few key words and phrases, and when it's queried, returns those matching songs. Wouldn't that be cool?

Anyway, I think what they've done up till now is cool enough.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Keyboards are Disgusting

Disgusting

From Slashdot today:

A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter." Also note that unless you read Swedish, you still have plausible deniability when asked to windex yours.

I guess that's gross, but think about it: how often do you clean your toilet seat? How often do you clean your keyboard?

Therefore, I'm sure that the toilet seat is cleaner than many things like the telephone, the surface of your desk, arm rests, on your office chair, your mouse, and what not. Don't worry, humans have a pretty good immune system.