Archive for August, 2009

A father’s love - inspirational video

// August 30th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Video

Last year I posted the inspirational video of Team Hoyt, an amazing story of a father’s relationship with his son.

Earlier this month Rory Dyer showed us an equally inspirational video during the GodFirst Church Men’s camp (Download audio resources | view some pictures )

The video replays the 400m race from the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. Britain’s Derek Redmond tears his hamstring, then gets up to try to finish the race. His father comes down from the stands to help him cross the finish line.

What’s that song again?

// August 29th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Music, Tech, Video, iPhone

Ever had a song stuck in your head and you don’t know the name? It happens to me all the time. Either I know a line from the song, or have some idea of the tune, but no idea who the artist or the song is.

To make matters worse, I always seem to miss the song intro on the radio and the DJ never seems to repeat the song title.

Midomi Song Identification and searchImagine my delight when I stumbled upon the iPhone song identification application Midomi. Let me briefly interject.
A good friend, Leon Jacobs once said, “The greatest things about iPhone is the potential that every new app has to completely transform the device into a totally new experience.” I have to agree with Leon. Midomi has transformed the way I interact with music.

The premise is simple - open Midomi, press the big orange button, hold your iPhone up to a source of music and voila, it identifies the artist and song title. It even allows you to play back a short clip (from its own database) so that you can confirm if it’s the same song. Just watch out for loud ambient noise though - it makes song recognition a bit tricky.

Surprisingly enough it even recognised my tone-deaf humming of certain songs. Of course, if you don’t want to feel like a dork singing to your phone, you can also search for a song or band just by saying or typing the name.

The features don’t stop there though. You can bookmark and share your song results via Twitter and Facebook. Check out the lyrics, videos via YouTube and obtain detailed artist info. You can buy the song, but I haven’t been able to do so since the iTunes music store is still not available in South Africa.

All in all, this is a great application and at $4.99 (around R38) it’s worth every cent.

Download the Midomi application for your iPhone here.

Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot
Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot Midomi screenshot

Face off

// August 15th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Photos

Cloë the domestic short hair cat stares down a leopard.

Afrigator