The last time I was in New York it sounded mostly like jackhammers. However I am assured that there are many other sounds available, just not outside my hotel room at 9am. SoundSeeker, at http://www.soundseeker.org/, offers a Google map featuring the audibles of NYC; it’s too bad that their icon selection gave me a bad case of squint.

When you first visit the site you’re shown a Google map of New York City, with little SoundSeeker icons all over it. Little white icons. On a grayish background. Unfortunately switching to map view instead of sat view actually makes things a little worse. How about some yellow icons?

Anyway, click on the icon and you’ll get a title of the sound, the date it was taken, and the name of the contributor. You’ll also see a little playbar within the popup window of information. The sounds vary a lot; there’s a furnace in Brooklyn, a farmer’s market, a carousel at Central Park, the Fulton Street Fish Market at 1:30am, etc. A couple of sounds I couldn’t load; I think I was missing a plugin (I tried this site with Firefox.)

If you wish to submit a sound you may; the page is at http://fm.hunter.cuny.edu/nysae/upload/index.php but at the moment only works with Macs. An interesting idea; I would have spent more time exploring had it been easier to see the icons.