ikaraoke

      Fast approaching a staggering 500,000 apps, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Apple iPhone allows us to do almost anything.

But designers are now patenting technology to help achieve the impossible for many - the ability to sing perfectly.

Apple has produced software for the iPhone and iPod turning the devices into a mobile karaoke system that tells you clearly if you are off-key or miss a beat.

The user will be able to use their iTunes library to choose their favourite songs to sing along to, according to the Daily Telegraph.

On the screen, just like a karaoke machine, the lyrics and tune will run along it in time with music.

But in a bid to improve the person's performance the software will analyse singing throughout and let them know how they are doing, with any mistakes amplified and the perfect pitch made to sound even better.

It is understood that through the user's earphones their errors will be made to sound worse so they can clearly hear where to improve.

But a great singer will hear their performance as if it was at a venue like the Royal Albert Hall.
At the end of the song every person will get a full appraisal of what they did right and wrong.
The patent also proposes allowing users to record their performances as well as edit and listen to them back - comparing them directly to the original hit.

It is also understood that the software will also have a means of saving face for very poor singers.If plugged into speakers a person's bum notes will be covered up with a 'fuzz' rather than be exaggerated like it would through headphones.

Apple refused to say how it would move forward with its patent or when it would be available, but it could be soon as a huge karaoke section has been developed on iTunes.

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Posted in: technology

Bullet train Accident in China

         A major accident on China’s much trumpeted new high speed rail system has prompted the inevitable “China quality” denunciations online.

  The train derailed crossing a bridge, with two carriages falling off the bridge into the river below. Rail authorities claim a “lightning strike” was responsible, causing a train to lose power on the bridge, only to be smashed into by another train approaching from behind. Each of the carriage of bullet train had the capacity of 100, Initial reports indicate at least 11 fatalities and 89 were injured.

 

      China has been accused of flagrantly pirating Japan’s Shinkansen, even had plans to sell their own  copies of bullet train overseas, and the father of its high speed rail program has been arrested for massive corruption – all facts which have resulted in massive schadenfreude in Japan, although there is some disappointment that no explosions were involved:

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Posted in: bullet train,China,F.Y.I.,Hot Issue,technology