Transfer Photo Files Using Sound Waves

Chirp

Humans exchange information by talking and listening to each other. The cleverness of humans also made this possible for machines, that instead of relying on radio waves to exchange information, an application made it possible to transfer files using audible sounds! Clever and I am very impressed when I tried it.

The application is called Chirp. This is called as such maybe because it makes a chirping sound when it transforms the file into sound waves. The receiving device hears the "chirp" and transforms it into the sent file magically!

The requirements and steps  in using Chirp!

1. With both devices connected to the internet, better with wi-fi, download the application from google play or from itunes if you have iOS device..

2. Open Chirp from the source device(either of the two can be the source device) and select a photo from your gallery(3) by pressing the + sign(1). You also have the option to take a fresh photo using the camera(2). Prepare your picture to be transformed into a  "chirp" by tapping(3) on it twice until the chirp button turns to yellow(4).This means the application has already converted it into a distinct chirp sound.

3. On your target device(whilst still connected to internet or wii-fi), open the chirp application.

4. On the source device, turn up the volume to make sure the chirp sound can be "heard", then tap the yellow chirp button(4). It will emit a chirping sound and the target device listens to it.

5. Then the magic happens. the file is received!

Watch video.

Last Words.

As the application is depending on sound, background noise might alter the received chirp that could affect the transfer. So it is advisable to use it in a quiet environment. Distance can also have a negative effect, so both devices should be close to each other. Internet connection is also required.

Try this little fun, If you have installed the chirp application, try opening it up and watch the video above from 1.46 timeline where the chirp message is sent. See if your phone can pickup the sound and watch while the same file is received and appear magically from your device! 

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Portable Scanner

Do we really need a scanner? Not everyone needs this but for someone like me who does a trickle of agency work, a scanner is a must. This is to "monetize" receipts that incurred whilst performing a job, for obvious reasons, cashbacks!

The traditional method of scanning with a dedicated machine is not as pleasant as it may look especially that I have an old machine and am not ready to upgrade it to a newer model that has a USB port or the ability to send the scanned image to a cloud storage. But again although it is easy, it still takes me at least 10 minutes from start to finish, connecting the scanner to the computer, scanning image. reducing the size, and emailing to the agency. That is without the hiccups of "scanner not detected",  or "program needs to update before you can use application" errors.

Quicker method is taking a photo with a smartphone, trimming the unnecessary edges then sending it, only to find out the image is not legible and need to send another one. This means the pay is delayed until this is cleared!

Fig 1. Native camera shot with manual editing

The better method is the first one, but still not the easiest. Merging the better and the quicker method may be my dream of yesterday, but today, thank you for the coders of CamScanner that they merge this two features and cut the time of processing in less time.

This is a cross flat form  application and can be downloaded from google's play, apple itunes or windows application page.

How to use it?

Scanning .

After download, open up the application then touch the camera button and take a snap to the document you want to to scan(1), continue with tapping the check button. At stage two(2), the application comes to work and it detects the edges automatically(2),tap check button. The next stage comes the magic, it stretch the image and give straight line at every edge, making it looks like professionally edited. The result is far better than just using the native camera and editing it manually.

Fig.2 Using the native camera with CSscanner

Sharing.

Emailing your scanned image is easy as well and you can do it within the application itself. Just tap the share button at the bottom of the application and you can choose to sent it as a jpg or pdf file(5). You can then email it(6) or send to your dropbox or google cloud storage. It also capable to transfer it with other devices through bluetooth or the faster wi-fi direct!.

Image quality.

I experimented in emailing and I could not fault the image quality. The result is better than the manually edited version. It is quicker to process and it does it all automatically.

Last Words.

This application became one of the useful programs I have downloaded. It also support OCR which means can distiguish text when you scan something. Although you do need to download another additional program. It can scan single images at a time, this means even if you take two photos side by side, it can only scan one of them. So if you have multiple receipts to scan, you need to do it one at a time. It is also best to hold the phone upright and not sideways. This is to avoid manipulating the object later to it's proper orientation, though you can do it within the application if you just did it sideways! Also when emailing, I prefer to use jpg because pdf usually is in a bigger file. You can also use the app to revive old photos easier and more comfortable than using a bigger machine.

Surf in Panoramic Mode

Browsers usually show one web page at a time. This is a similar situation on every browsers that I have tried and used. Although this is absolutely OK for everyday internet surfing, but sometimes this is not enough for some situations.

Ever done internet shopping and comparing prices from websites? To do this, we usually toggle from the opened tab to see similar items from different websites. There's nothing wrong with it but personally, I want to see these items side by side. Although there is a way to get round to it like opening two browsers and minimizing both windows to sit side by side . This takes a few more click and it seems like it is unnatural thing to do. Has the browser makers did not think of this and make an update so that we have this function  when we browse?

A new comer in the browser wars has acknowledge this shortcoming and made a new application that can do exactly like this.  And not only that, it is also  fast and worth a try

Download Polybrowser here.

Features.

1. Tab Browsing

Like the popular browsers, it supports multiple tabs(1) that can be opened in one browser window. The tabs can be dragged and positioned as you wish to keep your searches together.

2. Stiched Web Pages

The versatility of the stiched style of web pages is you can control the size of any of the windows so that the screen can accommodate more sites. This is useful when comparing like in shopping or researching for information. It is easy to change the width by dragging the middle of the stich(2) to either way. You can then navigate to each window by using the sliders(4) or by the arrow keys on your keyboard. The slider at the bottom of the screen will let you see all opened tabs like viewing a panorama picture.

3. Supports Multiple Search Engines

The program uses it's built in search engine, PolyFetch, which is powered by google but with a different interface. If you are not comfortable using it, you can easily change(3) it to popular engines like google or bing by customizing it.

4. Easy Access

Recently visited sites are usually tucked away on popular browsers. Polybrowser cleverly shows all visited sites on it's home tab. You can easily pin, launch or delete this pages(5) by clicking the corresponding button that appears when you hover your mouse over the thumbnail. Another clever thing that it does is it groups (6) similar websites into one speed launcher shortcut automatically.

Early Experience

Poly browser is still on it's early stage and it will need improvements as it goes. And here are some.

Polyfetch. It seems like it defaults to US contents. When I search for iphone 6, the search results show US apple store and other telecommunication companies in the US. As I am in the UK, this is not at all relevant to me. To get around it, I did put UK at the end of my search word.

Compatibility to Blogger. Whilst doing a post on the blogger flatform, I opened up two polybrowser tabs that show my edit page and a link site. Copying the link from the other site is not a problem but going to the edit page of blogger to paste it will not let me do it. The paste command is greyed or not active.

Having encountered these problems, I think the concept of this application is aimed for users to assist them and simplify complex tasks. But it does need to address these issues as users can easily change hearts when a vital function is missing.