London is one of the happiest cities in the world, according the Happy Barometer app. Sounds like nonsense if you ask us, or indeed anyone blessed with the gift of sight, but the mug-analysing app seems to believe our miserable capital is one of the most loved-up on the planet. 
It’s the Dappyest undoubtedly (one for our younger readers there), one of the stabbiest, maybe, if fear-mongering tabloids are to be believed, the coolest, yes, we’re allowed to be proud, but amongst the happiest? It’s like saying Eeyore was is one of the happiest characters in Winnie the Pooh.
Cynicism aside, the findings of the face-following Happy Barometer put London in fifth place behind Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania), Beijing, New York and Mexico, having sent a team to town in October to use their smartphone cameras to randomly scan passing people and allow the app’s ‘ingenious’ algorithm to determine the extent of the emotions expressed.
We’re guessing they picked a period high in Boris Johnson japery or Happy Barometer struggles to tell the difference between a grin and a grimace.
Tomas Dirvonskas, CEO of Lemon Labs – the brains behind the boat-race reading app – shrugs off any city satisfaction scepticism; but then he would, especially seeing as the company’s HQ is quite coincidentally centred at the beating heart of happiness in Vilnius.
Commenting on the creation of Happy Barometer, Dirvonskas it seems just wanted to share the Lithuanian love by building a tool for people to rate and track their happiness, an app that would be “a small step in making this world a better place”.
Available over on the App Store at a no-pence price guaranteed to bring an immediate smile to Apple-user’s faces, other OS favourers will just have to try and contain themselves for now…
Image: Flickr
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