I witnessed one of the most exciting technologies in years ... GfK, Germany's largest market research firm, has a new device for measuring TV watching and radio listening habits. It's a wristwatch! You are selected to wear the watch for two weeks. The watch takes a four-second "fingerprint" of ambient sound every minute. At the end, the watch is returned and the fingerprints are matched to determine exactly what you watched and listened to. The software behind this system appears similar to that of Shazam, which Tom blogged in early November. |