A new app lets you send pictures via sound

28.07.2012
It's not often that a jaded veteran like me falls in love with an app. But it happened this week with a new app called . It's based on one of those rare technologies like HTTP or XML that at first seems trifling, but ends up changing everything.

To oversimplify, Chirp uses sound to transmit words, pictures and URLs from one phone to another.

It's called Chirp, because its data transmission sounds like a robotic bird.

First, I'll tell you how Chirp works. Then I'll tell you why I think this bird has wings and could change how we all share data.

Chirp was created by a company called Animal Systems, which was a spinoff company by eggheads in the Computer Science Department at the University College London.