App For Common Sense

I saved this link awhile back when I came across it so I could remember to talk about it when I had some time to blog.

From Mind Body & Green:

The new app can tell the difference between four types of infant cries: sleepiness, hunger, wet diaper, and pain. (Yes, there is seriously an app for that. Are you really surprised?)

In order to figure out why a baby is crying, all a parent needs to do is press the record button on the app for 10 seconds (which might, admittedly, feel like a lifetime), and the app will compare the recording to a database of other babies crying and come up with a translation.

And the database is pretty hefty. Developers at the National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin collected over 200,000 different crying sounds.

For infants under two weeks old, the app has an accuracy of 92%,researchers say, but the accuracy of its analysis starts to taper as the baby gets older. Still, they explain, the accuracy is still around 77% for a four-month-old baby. And after six months, anyway, the app becomes less useful as babies become more comfortable in their environment.

Plus, the app even lets users set up personal settings for their own babies. In other words, the app can get to know your baby’s cries. So now, your smartphone is not only a telephone, a text messenger, a camera, a flashlight, and a map ... it's also a little nanny.

Isn't it amazing? I'm just hoping the parents take the time to feed the baby, change it's diaper and a nap before they have to resort to an app.