Worldwide wrap

In this edition of the Worldwide wrap, new project TransProse uses algorithms to translate the emotions conveyed within a text into music that reflects the same sentiments, and undergraduate student Joe Wild is using repurposed fridges to create drinking water from thin air. Get the details on these stories and more below.

French marketing agency Oglivy Paris has developed Vittel, a bottle cap with an in-built 'alarm' that users can set to remind themselves when to drink.

To use the cap, it is screwed onto the top of a regular bottle. When it is screwed in place, a timer is set in motion.

After an hour, it activates a little spring inside the cap the causes a flag at the top to pop up, grabbing a person's attention. The cap has been part of an experiment to see if it encourages people to hydrate more often.
Via: Daily Mail

Thefties are photos of electronics thieves taken with a tablet or smartphone's front-facing camera. The goal is to give police something to go on if a user's device is stolen, or let the user identify the culprit if it's someone they know.

The mobile security company Lookout is marketing thefties as part of its software suite for iOS and Android. The service currently sends users e-mail alerts when it seems like someone is tampering with the user's device (by entering incorrect security codes, trying to uninstall software etc) and then GPS-tracks it so users can locate it from a browser. But now the thefties feature will also activate the device's front-facing camera and stealthily photograph whoever is staring down at it.

Users get the photo in their inbox with a map pointing to the device's location.
Via: Slate

The miCoach Smart Ball is a Bluetooth-enabled football covered in sensors to train users in multiple "dead ball" techniques, including penalties, free kicks, shooting, corners, passes and goal kicks.

The ball can relay a bunch of data to the dedicated miCoach Smart Ball app on the user's phone via Bluetooth about how the ball has been kicked, so users can learn about and from their mistakes. The app can tell users how hard they have struck the ball and shows users visual depictions of flight trajectories, ball spin and impact points.

The app also has a training section full of tutorials that will help keen footballers to progressively master more and more advanced techniques.
Via: Wired

A new project called TransProse uses algorithms to translate the emotions conveyed within a text into music that reflects the same sentiments.

TransProse is a collaboration between Hannah Davis, a New York-based programmer and artist, and Saif Mohammad, a research officer at the National Research Council Canada in Ottawa.

Together, Mohammad and Davis worked to create an algorithm that could build music based on these associations. They presented their results in a paper at the European Association for Computational Linguistics Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Literature last month in Sweden.
Via: Live Science

Undergraduate student Joe Wild is using repurposed fridges to create drinking water from thin air to help people in developing countries.

The machine, which can be run by solar power, is designed for use in humid climates and can provide enough water to meet the daily needs of a small family.

It works by drawing air into a cool fridge with reused computer fans and passing it through a cold copper tube.

As the warm, humid air cools in the tube the vapour contents condense to form water. The water is then collected at the bottom of the fridge in a container and is stored at a low temperature to reduce any health risks or contamination.
Via: Telegraph

Microsoft showed off its Skype Translator feature at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on Tuesday.

Skype Translator allows users to speak into the video chatting service in their language of choice. The words are then translated into the recipient's preferred language. The system will hear users' words and do its best to translate them in real-time. The display will show a text translation of what was just spoken in case the automated voice isn't able to handle a pronunciation or moves too fast.
Via: Huffington Post