We're all wizards now.    A C Clarke's often cited,paraphrased or mangle quote is appropriate for many of the daily tasks we take for granted.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ 1972 A. C. Clarke Lost Worlds

Over the last couple of weeks I've found that walk up magic and showing people how to get the most out of a cell phone  leads to the same reaction. ( though  less likely to get you  burned as a witch in some of our undeveloped  3g areas )   as  making their mind backflip.

I've had a good week of being late to the party.   Shazam is one of those apps that is cooler than a cold man's  cold bits  during an Alaskan  Mr Ice Pants festival.   For the last  few months  I've been trying to find out the names of a couple of songs that are played   at the  good old hockey game,  e.g Phoenix Coyotes  and not having a lot of success.  Both tracks  have no music ,  have really short hooks and one could classify them as the " bleep bleep thump"  school.

I've sat with an iPhone in my pocket a lot of the times while wondering. then Duh!  Loaded the shazam app from the stadium wifi,  awaited the song to come on and set it to capture.   That's a PA  with  cheering and clapping   pervasive and still it was able to determine some of the songs under these conditions.    Just load, lift and listen and it does the rest on your iPhone or Android device and you can save it for later, or buy it  now.   My god a  business model on the mobile web what a wondrous age we live in!



That's still not the interesting part.  Why did it take so long to put this 2+2  together?   Turns out it was an ambiguity that I could live with but my  wife always  kept asking about.. "what song's that"   which is a problem that's harder to live with.   Just  getting the time to integrate it or to try finding out what is, and isn't useful , could be a second career,  a really badly remunerated  second career.   So make it a hobby  to find out what your friends regularly overlook  when relating to the net  and   with your  best  Carnac the magnificient
 impression  hold the phone  to your head and proceed to  show them ,  I'd  bring the phone back down prior, the magic.

Why spend the time?  Most of the coolest apps  work when   you have an audience,  heck  in that  stadium of 11,000 people only  2 were logged in on the  two presence services I use. In general   I feel like a "boy and his iPod dog" wandering the  desert , Phoenix  looks pretty much looks like  distopic sci fi anyway ,  between hits.