Digital Tuner for Violin

When: Some months ago, and few days ago, during meals

Where: At home, around dining table

What: A digital tuner that helps violin students to learn correct tunes. When a note is played, it would provide a visual and aural feedback for whether the note is in tune. If not in tune, it would have visual signal that tells which direction it is supposed to go, and an aural signal of the correct pitch. This device/software should have the capability of detecting any notes automatically.

Inspiration:
A violin teacher mentioned that he had trouble teaching his students how to "listen" for the correct tune. Most students cannot hear the difference when it's off tune because violin is an instrument so fine that even a slight movement by the width of a hair could affect the outcome. He can correct the students during the lessons, however, parents cannot enforce the same sensitivity at home for the kids.

He wanted to have a device that can detect if a violin note is in tune or not by sending au audible signal to the students. If the playing note is not in tune, the device should emit an alerting sound accompanied by continuously playing the correct note.

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Update:

Alternative Search Terms

When: 09:30am

Where: bathroom

What: Google's image search page gives you alternative search terms when you make a typo. (e.g. typing in webpage, it will ask you Did you mean web page?) Wouldn't it be nice if it gives you suggestions on some of the alternative search terms?

Inspiration: Monster.com gives you alternative search terms when you perform a job search. For example, if you type in programmer as keyword, it will give you related keywords such as software engineer, programmer analyst, database programmer, system programmer, etc. as alternative search terms, thus expanding your search result.

Update on 10/25/2004 -
Google had it implemented!! Darn. =(

wasteland

pretty boomboom

kaboom