‘chirp’ [verb] -
(of a small bird or an insect) make a short, sharp, high-pitched sound.
This is another post for commoners (like
me) – who struggle with their phone often wondering why there are so many
unexplored fields ! ~ and not for techno-buffs.
In 1990s the revolution in TV sets – was the
remote control – before that people had to go walk a few steps to the TV and change channel manually – no trouble
at a time when you had DD1 and few hours of DD2. The remote control uses light waves just beyond the visible spectrum
of light—infrared light waves—to change channels on the TV as also in Airconditioners and other
equipment. From Nokia bricks, 3310
& 3315 – to later day marvels that
came with camera – VGA one at that – no
memory card slot, internal memory of 15
MB ! – life has moved on fast lane.
For transferring
images / files from one mobile to another – it was ‘infrared’ technology. Infrared (IR) is invisible radiant energy,
electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light. Infrared worked within a short distance only
and the equipments had to be kept nearer without movement – once in the direct "line of sight" –
transfer could happen slowly. It is no
longer there in phones, replaced by Bluetooth – the wireless technology
standard for exchanging data over short distances. Then
there are other messaging apps like WA, messengers and e-mails through which
too data can be exchanged.
I had
earlier posted on ‘NFC’ (near field communication), a technology that allows
two devices to "talk" to each other wirelessly at close range. In some phones, you can share photos / files
from one phone to another by simply tapping the two together ! Windows Phone supports this type of wireless
communication called NFC (near field communication) that lets you transfer
files and other things quickly and wirelessly, at close range. As long as your Windows Phone supports NFC,
and the device you're sharing with does too, you can transfer photos, contacts,
websites, and a lot more. You can even tap to wirelessly pair two devices, such
as your phone and a set of speakers.
A
chirp, in technology parlance, is a
signal in which the frequency increases ('up-chirp') or decreases
('down-chirp') with time. In some sources, the term chirp is
used interchangeably with sweep signal. It is commonly used in sonar and radar, but
has other applications, such as in spread spectrum communications. The name is a reference to the chirping sound
made by birds.
More
specifically, Chirp is an ‘app’ that transmits data via a burst of
"digital birdsong" aims to simplify the way users share images and
other files between smartphones. So, now you can
share photos and links using ‘sound’- Chirp app lets you send and receive files ‘without
Wi-Fi’ by 'singing' to other devices. In
the free Chirp apps, data in the files are turned into audio clips, which are
in turn picked up and decoded by fellow Chirp users and converted into links to
the original files.
Chirp was developed
by London-based Asio Ltd and each chirp lasts about two seconds. The Chirp
platform uses an audio protocol to encode a character sequence as a series of
pitched tones. A network protocol then stores the data and assigns it a unique
short code of ten characters. The audio protocol features an alphabet of 32
characters, each mapped to one of 32 pictures a semitone apart. To create a
Chirp, open a file in the app and press the Chirp button. The file will be
encoded and the sound played. This sound is then picked up and decoded by fellow
Chirp users and converted into links to the original files. Mobile data is needed to upload the Chirp to
the app's server, but once it is received data and Wi-Fi can be turned off.
These links can
point to a URL, photo, video, GIF, song, Word document and more, and the
decoding happens in real-time on the phone. Apple offers a similar sharing
tool, known as ‘AirDrop’, but Chirp works across iOS and Android, and the
developers are working on a Windows version of the service.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
15th May
2015.