Shazam

Shazam is one of the ubiquitous apps on iPhone, and I've tested it on both my iPod Touch 2nd Generation and this borrowed iPhone 3GS I've unlocked to work on Solo.  Of the two devices I've tested it on I feel that it works much better on the 3GS with the built in microphone than it ever did with this plug in gadget I picked up from dealextreme.com for my iPod.  If you don't know yet, Shazam identifies any music that is playing.  Now it does have some limitations, for instance you can't just hum a tune and it identifies it for you.  Also if you are having a hard time hearing the song there's a really good chance that Shazam can't hear it either.  There is a small list of impossible to identify songs, and I haven't found any commercial songs that it can't identify.  I have found that there are songs it won't identify, and wouldn't you know it these are the same songs I've been having trouble with tagging.

There is also a facebook tie in to compare songs with your friends and a few other features that I haven't fully explored either.  Mostly because all I want to do is identify the song, check if I can buy it on iTunes, and save the result for later if I can't.  It does that just fine, and there's even a cloud element to it that lets you see the songs you've tagged on all your devices.  This same cloud feature will e-mail you from time to time.  I find this feature VERY annoying because I only use the app once in a while, and an email a day with the exact same content just is not my idea of fun.

The discover tab is interesting, but redundant with the iTunes store's discover features. And there is practically no reason to go into the settings tab, unless you want to tie Shazam to your Facebook account.  There's other settings in there, but I found no practical need of them for day to day use.

All in all the iPhone app passes mustard, and it works with well with my iPod Touch 2 if there's a microphone attached.

Just as before, I forgot to take screenshots until after I wrote the review, so here they are now: