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Florian Alt, Bastian Pfleging
Sonify - A Platform for the Sonification of Text Messages
In Mensch & Computer 2013: Interaktive Vielfalt. Muenchen: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013, pp. 149-158. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/9783486781229.149, http://dl.mensch-und-computer.de/handle/123456789/3314. (bib)

Sonification of text messages offers a great potential for personalization while at the same time, allowing rich information to be mediated. For example, ringtones are the major form of personalization, on smartphones besides apps and background images. Ringtones are often used as a form of selfexpression, by the smartphone owner (e.g., using ones favorite sound track as standard ringtone), but, also to identify the caller or sender of a message (e.g., the user knows who is calling without taking the, phone out of the pocket). We believe this approach to be applicable to a wide variety of text messages,, such as SMS, email, or IM. In this paper, we first present a web-based platform that allows usergenerated, mappings for text sonification to be created and managed. An API enables any application to, send a text message and receive the sonification in the form of a MIDI file. To showcase the potential,, we implemented an Android app that sonifies incoming SMS. Second, we evaluate the feasibility of our, approach and show that sonified messages are equally effective as ringtones when conveying meta, information.