I first got a hint of the fi-yaah! Apple’s “One App At a Time” campaign was working with while watching the Olympics, when I peeped their iPhone 3G Lonely Planet Mandarin Audiobook commercial. The software appears to hold hundreds of common Chinese phrases, all spoken fluently by natives. One can play any of them back upon command, seamlessly turning communication within a complex tongue into something as easy as pointing.
So they had me at hello, but, yo: That iPhone 3G Shazam app commercial, above, where you put the phone up to a music source, it tells you what the song is you’re hearing, and even takes you to iTunes to buy a copy, is one of the frostiest things I’ve ever seen. (Apple-style, in the advertisement, the track Shazam detects is the very one playing in the ad advertising Shazam, the Submarines’ yummy, Beatlesesque “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie.”)
Has anybody gotten this toy yet? I noticed the “Sequence Shortened” copy in the ad, above, but still: Is it as niiiiiiiiice to use as it looks?
2 comments ↓
I’ve had Shazam on my iPhone for about two months and it’s incredible. I use it a lot when I’m in movies because I don’t want to wait around for the credits to see who sung/played what. So far it has been flawless in its performance…I’ve also used it in my car and it zaps the music perfectly, pulls up the CD cover and if you want can download the song right to the iPhone…incredible app
This kinda technology is totally amazing to me. I made a dub of an LP on to CD several years back, mastered as data with Roxio. Musicmatch or some such was able to recognize it, name the tracks and pull up album art for it when I ripped it to mp3 a few years later (a feat iTunes hasn’t matched). I totally freaked. It’s magic, this AI ish.
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