Tracy Chapman Crashed My iPhone!

You heard it here first: Tracy Chapman can crash an iPhone 3G. Okay, maybe Tracy had nothing to do with it but "Give Me One Reason" was the song that was playing on my car radio when Shazam brought my iPhone to its knees. My phone froze harder than Lake Bemidji in January and I couldn't even reboot holding the power button down. Eventually, after leaving my phone alone long enough for it to go to sleep, I was able to reboot using the power button and things were back to normal after that.

Speaking of Shazam, if you haven't tried it out yet you really should. It's a pretty amazing free iPhone app. Shazam allows you to "Tag" music you hear from your car radio, the TV, the theater, pretty much everywhere. All you do is tap the "Tag Now" button and Shazam will start listening to what ever music is playing. It records a sample (12 seconds is the default) and then sends that off to Shazam the company. Within a few seconds it returns the name of the song, album, artist, label, genre, album art, links to the song in iTunes (so you can buy) and links to any related YouTube videos. It's like magic! You can also attach a picture to the tag (Shazam calls this "Capture the Moment") and share the tag via Mail. Shazam works amazingly well and of the 20 or so songs I've tagged only 1 failed to return a result. It was an old 1950's song that I'd never hear before.

So, the next time you just absolutely have to know the title of the song you're listening to in the elevator, Shazam it. Just make sure it's not a Tracy Chapman song or your iPhone will go wonky. You've been warned.