Shazam!

Up until today, I have been able to resist the siren song of the iPhone.

But today I learned about an application (which is evidently also available for the iPod Touch) that makes me want to hurry out and buy one.

The application is called Shazam, and in fact it works on mobile phones other than the iPhone.

So what is it?

Imagine that you're watching a tv show. A song starts to play. You really like the song... but what the heck is it? Well, you could wait for the credits and try to figure it out, or maybe go online later and see if somebody has posted something that tells you.

But Shazam makes it easy - "Shazam gives instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the song that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply share your discovery with your family and friends.

"Musical moments turned into memories and stories whenever and wherever you happen to be and linked to the one device that is always with you, your mobile phone."

Here's how it works: a song is playing somewhere in your environment (maybe you're at the store, listening to the radio, even at the movies). You like it and want to know whodunit. You grab your Internet-equipped (and Shazam-ready) cell phone, access the Shazam applet, and "let it listen" for about thirty seconds. Shazam then goes out and scours its database for a matching song - and delivers the info to your cell phone. With properly equipped phones (like the iPhone), you can buy the song then and there. Or share the information with a friend. Or send the info back to your email for later retrieval.

As with any other user-powered database, the more people who use the app, the more extensive the database becomes.

Costs for the service include a monthly use fee (depends on what program you choose), plus any data transfer charge specified by your cell phone carrier.

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