Chirp: The Easiest Way of Sharing Data

A new way of sharing data across iOS devices is available with the Chirp app. Now, it takes a ‘chirp’ to send someone your content, whether it is a link or a photo, without pairing your devices. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Birds’ sounds are widely used in social networking. First it was twitting something to your friends, and now it’s ‘chirping’. Chirp is the app that allows you to share your content with other people who are somewhere near you at the moment, but without a need for your devices to be paired. A two-second long sound announces the start of data transmission from your device, and the recipient’s device perceives this ‘chirp’ and accepts your content, which is, however, somewhat limited right now.

Price: Free
Current Version: 1.1 (19 July 2012)
Genre: Social Networking, Data Sharing
Developer: ASGI Ltd.
System Required: iOS 4.1 or later
Rating (App Store): 4

How Chirp Works. London-based developers Animal Systems have solved a problem with sharing data, which iOS users could do through a series of app, which, however, required wireless connection or Bluetooth. In the latter case, the necessity of pairing the devices was the problem.

It takes only a ‘chirp’. The app’s creators have developed software, which reacts with a bird-like sound to an attempt to send some data. The nearby devices, which also have Chirp installed, understand this sound as a signal for accepting the transmitted data. This process is very quick, and you don’t even need a Wi-Fi connection for this to work. In this case, a ‘chirp’ is a sound-based code of the data’s location in the app’s storage, which is recognized by the app.

The new Twitter? At the moment, the content you can share with Chirp is limited to pictures, web links, and tweet-sized messages. The ‘chirps’ are displayed in a feed, which is similar to a timeline in Twitter where you can see the whole history of ‘chirps’ that you exchanged with others.
Still, the app will be potentially advantageous to advertisers and media, which would be able to share their ads, coupons, or any other additional materials to a large number of people within a certain area. Of course, there are some limitations to this app. For example, the sent data are moderated by filters that do not allow sharing pornographic or any other illegal web content.

Features

• Innovative and extremely easy way to share data with others
• Share something by pushing just one button
• Share your data with a group of friends
• Includes link-sharing

Pros and Cons

Pros: data sharing doesn’t requires devices to be paired or to have a wireless connection. The apps has a great potential.

Cons: the type of data you can send is limited at the moment. It is not always convenient that your Chirp will accept data by anyone automatically within the reach.

Download Chirp from the iTunes App Store