When Immensely Difficult Tasks Appear Simple

I love it when one (or a group) of our kind manages to pull of something monumentally difficult and make it appear as if it should surprise us that we weren't able to do something so simple earlier.

Case in point. The Shazam app for the iPhone and Android. If you're familiar with it you'll know where I'm coming from. To fill in the uninitiated, Shazam uses the speakerphone mic on your cellphone to listen to and sample a small segment of a song, say playing on the radio. It then compares that sample to what must be a gigantic database of music and identifies the song, artist and album. The database is stored a some remote server, not on your phone. Shazam must upload the sample it records wirelessly to that server, which processes the match and then sends the result back to your phone.

It happens fast, usually in under 15 seconds. And most of that time is devoted to sampling the music. The actual matching time is a pittance. And for me at least it hasn't missed one yet. But here's the thing. Matching a full music track to a full music track wouldn't be that hard. All you have to do is compare the waveforms of each full track. If the shapes match, the songs match. But Shazam doesn't compare a full track. Generally you come into the song somewhere in the middle. And even then Shazam only samples a small portion of the song. So now you're asking the computer to compare a small portion of an unknown song, starting at an unknown point in that song, to a database of every song ever recorded (or thereabouts.) That's orders of magnitude more difficult than comparing full tracks, because now the computer has to compare its sample to part of a song, and it has absolutely no idea what part that is.

And that's what I mean. These programmers have managed to pull off what really constitutes computing magic. It's beautiful, and not just because it works, but because it does it so elegantly and so transparently that you completely forget the monumental piece of computing that's taking place under the hood. And apart from all of that, Shazam is a kick to use. It's essential for the music lover and radio listener.

If you get it, you'll love it and you'll use it constantly. Just try and get an appreciation for the fact that what your doing almost shouldn't be possible.*


*That's a bit of an overstatement maybe, but it sells newspapers.

The Droid Invasion is Going to Rock

You're all probably seen the commercials for Verizon's new Droid phone by now. They're running them constantly, and they're making a lot of promises. It's a huge buzz campaign, and it's a lot to live up to.

The Droid delivers.

You know I've been in the market for a new phone, and phones based on Google's open source Android operating system were high on my list. After a thorough study of the current and upcoming contenders, I settled on the Droid. I'm currently using it for a two week trial period. I can return it for a full refund if I'm not satisfied, but I don't suspect that will happen.

The phone and the operating system rock! I really do believe this phone could finally blossom Android into the iPhone killer it promised to be. And since I wanted an iPhone but couldn't live with switching back to AT&T, I'm pretty ecstatic about that. The phone is gorgeous, zippy and feature-packed, and while it lags far behind the iPhone in total number of Apps, it's does have a large collection, one that's quickly growing. The fact the Android is open source is a huge boon in that department, and will mean that, as more people adopt Android phones (and as more and more developers get sick of Apple's selection process), App development for Android will skyrocket.

The Droid is a slick phone easily worthy of consideration as an alternative to the iPhone for anyone sick of or unwilling to join up with AT&T. Granted the ultimate "iPhone on AT&T" killer would be the "iPhone on Verizon", or really any other network, but that won't happen until the middle of 2010, and not until 2011 if the exclusivity contract renewal rumors are true. I'm not willing (or able, my phone is falling apart) to wait that long. The Droid is as good as the iPhone in most respects and better in others (it has a virtual keyboard AND a physical keyboard, for one). Yeah, it doesn't have multi touch, which sucks. But the phone does support it. There are Apps available that operate just the iPhone in that capacity. The operating system itself supports it, too. It's just unimplemented. I think Google is afraid of legal repercussions. But, as I said, Android is open source, so it's only a matter of time before someone designs an App that unlocks multi touch system wide.

So yeah, I'm keeping the phone and switching to Verizon. Let the Droid invasion begin!