If you love the hustle and bustle of working at a coffee shop but are too cheap to pay for a $5 latté, there’s now an app that lets you get something close to the same experience in a “virtual cafe.”
It’s called Coffitivity and provides the ambient sounds of a coffee shop in your headphones.
“Morning Murmur,” the current free track in a rotating schedule, offers the clinking glasses and background chatter of a real cafe without having to jealously guard the one electrical outlet from all the other laptop users who think they’ll get work done but, really, they’re just going to kill an hour on Facebook.
And if you want more variety in your fake social situation — the whirr of a coffee grinder, a steaming espresso machine — that shit costs money, of course.
Coffitivity claims to provide the necessary mix of calm and commotion that aids in creativity. But long gone are the days of actually needing to be in a place that provides such an environment; now office workers can stay put in their sterile cubicles and purchase those sounds for $1.99 from the App Store.
The research backing up the need to buy Coffitivity’s public noises is from the Journal of Consumer Research that shows a moderate level of “ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks.” So there’s at least some justification for using this service.
A quick Twitter search would seem to suggest that novels are being written, essays graded and Bible study, um, studied — all due to a recording of what you might find across the street.
Plugging in to do final edits on my latest novel with new features from @Coffitivity http://t.co/LBri0u6mvN #sounds4work
— Christine Merrill (@double_cheese) September 26, 2013
Last bit of grading with @Coffitivity. http://t.co/dtLa3rw1HL
— Rob DeVet (@rdevet) September 26, 2013
Plugging in to do some research with new features from @Coffitivity http://t.co/ws0BXSOp4W #sounds4work
— Estella Morales (@estellamorales) September 25, 2013
Editing a Bible study on 1 Timothy with help from Coffitivity. http://t.co/KudlXpq242 #sounds4work
— Rebecca Brant (@CopyTuner) September 25, 2013
Noted as No. 49 on Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2013, the free online loop was playing the entire time I wrote this post, which may have given me the needed creativity to just do a Google search for other, free versions available online or for download.
[image via Charleston's TheDigitel/Flickr] [Coffitivity.com]