US Courts: Federal Courts Participate in Audio Livestream Pilot. “Thirteen district courts around the country will livestream audio of select proceedings in civil cases of public interest next year as part of a two-year pilot program. Some of the courts already have begun making proceedings available via audio livestreams. The Northern District of Georgia on […]
TechRadar: Social media is embracing audio more than ever – but deaf users are being left behind. “… in the fast-paced corporate world of social media, deaf and hard of hearing users are still seeing accessibility forgotten about when features are developed or reviewed. Even when a decision is considered to negatively impact them, advocates […]
Recode: How to keep the smart speaker you got for the holidays and still keep some of your privacy, too. “Studies have shown that most smart speaker owners don’t know that their devices are storing their recordings or that they might be reviewed by humans, and are concerned about how much data their devices collect […]
New York Times: Listen to Indigenous People. “The Indigenous people of the land now called North America are often only brought up in the past tense in primary school classrooms. The fact is they are a growing population, an increasing demographic in the country and in Congress, yet most Americans are woefully uninformed about their […]
Good E-Reader: The best places to download free audiobooks in 2020. “There is no shortage of online retailers that allow you to subscribe and download audiobooks. Some of the most popular are Audible, Scribd, and Storytel. What if you are on a budget or do not want to pay for audiobooks? There is plenty of […]
TechCrunch: Twitter’s Audio Spaces test includes transcriptions, speaker controls and reporting features. “Earlier this month, Twitter announced it would soon begin testing its own Clubhouse rival, called Audio Spaces. The new product will allow Twitter users to gather in dedicated spaces for live conversations with another person or with groups of people. While the company […]
BBC: Isle of Man ‘rich sound archive’ to be digitised . “Recordings of the last native Manx speakers and wartime internees from the Isle of Man’s ‘rich sound archive’ are to be digitised and put online as part of a British Library project. About 600 recordings held in the Manx National Heritage (MNH) archives will […]
The Register: Just cough into your phone, please… MIT lab thinks it can diagnose COVID-19 from the way you expectorate. “Academics claim their AI software can detect, with 98.5 per cent accuracy, whether or not someone has caught the COVID-19 coronavirus, just from the sound of their coughing. To build this software, the MIT team […]
Bloomberg CityLab: How the Pandemic Changed the Urban Soundscape. “When cities went on lockdown during the pandemic, things got quieter, but they didn’t fall totally silent. Instead, the hooting of the scops owls became more distinct in Thessaloniki, Greece, where the sound of traffic once drowned them out. Birds in San Francisco sang in softer […]
Man of Many: New Google Feature Let’s You to Hum a Song You’re Trying to Find. “Hey, you know that song that goes, ‘duh do do de duh duh’? Nope? Me neither, but I can guarantee the geniuses over Alphabet Inc. might have the answer to the dreaded earworm question because Google is bringing out […]
NBC News: The Invisible Crowd: Inside the NFL’s Fake Crowd Noise System. “Wendel Stevens has spent decades mixing sound for live football broadcasts. During a game, he’s thinking about the sound of the announcers’ voices, when to play the iconic theme music, what players are doing on the field and what coaches are yelling from […]
Library of Congress: Hispanic Audio Archive Rebrands as the PALABRA Archive and Releases New Recordings. “With the Library’s Hispanic Heritage Month festivities underway, it is time to celebrate one of our institution’s most treasured Luso-Hispanic collections. This year, as is tradition during the heritage celebrations, the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress announces the […]
The Next Web: This Chrome extensions turns articles into audio playlists. “As a reporter, I have to read a lot of articles every day, and I often can’t get around to all the tabs I open by the time I clock out. It’s frustrating as hell, and I’ve been looking for a solution to clear […]
The Conversation: ASMR: what we know so far about this unique brain phenomenon – and what we don’t. “ASMR is the third most popular search term on youtube worldwide. But in case you haven’t heard of it, it stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. ASMR is a complex emotional state that only some people experience […]
Data Horde: Search for Sound: A New Feature on Internet Archive. “If you’ve been browsing the Internet Archive recently, you might have noticed a new search option called ‘Search radio transcripts’. You can now search through radio broadcasts as if looking up something in a book, it’s pretty neat!”