The puzzle solver
Recently, I came across an article that tried to explain one of the wonders of our age. Yes, I’m referring to Shazam. Perhaps the best reason for owning an iOS product is that app.
In a few words, you let the app “listen” to a song, for only a few seconds, and it comes back with the song title, artist, lyrics, album cover… everything necessary to stop those brain cells eroding as you contemplate your life with memory loss. Humans have a super power, where we can identify a snippet of music not heard for ages (albeit, our ages). Your dog might be really good at detecting the cheese block as it comes out of the fridge, but we can tell that a song was performed by Procol Harem, or Tommy Roe, or whatever.
The article explained that computers are very efficient at pattern matches, so what it does is test a “profile” of a song” against a database. More often than not, if the recording isn’t matched by ambient noise, or cultural ambiguity, Shazam will come up with the identity. Not as fast as me identifying the opening chord to certain songs, but what can you expect from a computer? Well, that it will improve, as I start to fail.
I’m going to serve my need to know with this crutch, at least until I no longer have a battery that charges, or bandwidth available from the nearest router. Hey, Mr. DJ, I’m on top of this. You can go back to choosing the next piece in my auditory puzzle.
My family tree database passed the 82K mark this afternoon.
