dB – For those of you that love things that help you chronicle all facets of your life, Faber Acoustical has developed a uniquely original application that deserves your attention. In the age of Web 2.0 and countless social network platforms out there, dB provides an interesting approach to enable us to tell the stories of our lives. What’s the secret sauce in dB’s mix, the exercise of measurement…
At it’s core, dB is an application that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a device to measure sound. On the surface, that may not sound very exciting until you think of all the possibilities in the exciting moments of your life. I’ll use some of the joys of my life as example to feature how dB has relevance.
My special moments — happy hour with coworkers, playing Madden with my boys, dancing at the club — can have this cool new way to supplement the other customary ways I keep mementos of my enjoyable experiences.
Like the title of the application hints at, measurement of sound is captured in decibels (tops off at 105db) from the iPhone’s microphone. Besides capturing the decibel level, dB also gives options to document the geographical location of the tag using the GPS feature of the iPhone. Pretty neat!
The ease of use for dB must be noted. Right after opening the application, you can immediately “tag” (e.g. measure) your environment. A ton of options are made available to share the moment as a photo, graph, email, or a tweet on Twitter with a tap of a button.
The glaring omissions on all the sharing options is the fact that dB doesn’t seamlessly integrate with Facebook or MySpace. But like all applications, the magic of software updates has me hopeful something will get done there. While it may take a short while to understand the point behind dB, the interface is fool proof which is great for a mass market application such as this one.
dB is an awesome idea executed nearly flawlessly. The ways in which the application integrates itself in the UI and features of the hardware is exemplary. It must be noted that dB isn’t compatible with the 1st generation iPod touch based on limitations of that first generation hardware. dB deserves your buck, especially if you’re a social networking junkie that loves to share everything like me!