iPhone whitenoise: for pilots, babies and hardworking journos
By Gareth Powell
White noise. Wonderful stuff. Could not live without it. There is a new device in both the iPhone and the iPod touch that helps you sleep. Such a device has been in use for years. Now it is available for about 99 cents, which must be the bargain of all time.
What it does is put out white noise. You can choose the type — crashing waves. soft music but most go just for a steady noise.
Try sleeping in Asia. There are street noises. Doors slamming. Elevators working through the night. Not conducive to a good night’s sleep.
So you switch on your machine and select White Noise. Until the iPhone and the iPod Touch came along you use to buy a special device.
Now for 99 cents, the iPhone application offers 40 sounds that aim to soothe you: waves crashing, crickets chirping — even an air conditioner humming which seems a bit daft.
This will NOT, despite what you will be told, work first time out of the box.
You have to tune the level of white noise to one that suits you. And, in my case, it is plugged into my computer so that the battery does not go flat.
It works. It works really well.
But you must tune it so that it is precisely suited to you — not too loud and not too quiet.
In reporting it the Washington Post (which has my thanks for it is one less device to lug around) show that there was an entire category of health care and fitness , with 745 options that range from the gimmicky to the useful.
They include custom diaries, calorie counters (that track what you eat), pedometers (that track your every footstep), programs that track your smoking habit, your blood pressure and your contractions at the end of pregnancy. (The last does not apply to me.)
It is excellent on blood pressure, no comment on smoking and a load of old moody on pedometers and calorie counters. Pedometers are, at the very best, indicators, loose indicators, of how many steps you have taken. 11,000 a day would be a fair bet. But pedometers are horridly inaccurate no matter how expensive they be. And the one in the iPhone is no better.
Calorie counters depend on whether you are given to telling the truth. If you are overweight you are not given to telling yourself the truth and no computer or iPhone or iPod Flah will prove otherwise.
The white noise is a wonderful bonus although it requires some tuning until you get the noise level just right.
Most of the rest is just gubbins. Of course, it was an over-excess of intake of gubbins that got you fat in the first place.
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February 14th, 2009
I love the White noise App, however, you may want to try my Deep Relaxation App for the iPhone.
Many people are using it to get to sleep in difficult circumstances. Hive Brain had written the code: Here is the iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=287925639
Cheers,
Andrew Johnson
February 14th, 2009
Andrew
Will try it and report back. You have the ideal test consumer here.
Gareth