How To Track Music, Scan Bar Codes On A Cell Phone

With new phones, including the Apple iPhone and the T-Mobile G1, you can do more than call friends. You can find your way home or go bowling without picking up a ball. You can even scan bar codes at the mall and comparison shop.

Technology expert Omar Gallaga of the Austin American-Statesman showed NPR's Robert Siegel the software people can download on a few different cell phones.

With Shop Savvy, the phone can scan anything from a book to a CD to a bottle of Snapple. It uses the built-in camera to scan the bar code, and up pops the cheapest price on the product as well as reviews from people who have purchased the product.

Gallaga scanned a copy of Pretty Birds, by NPR's Scott Simon, and found 37 cents as the best price for a used copy on Amazon.com. For a new copy at Barnes & Noble: $6.10.

"You're getting quite a bit of information right there in the palm of your hand," Gallaga says.

Also on the T-Mobile phone and iPhone, people can download an application called Shazam.

"If you hear a song on the radio you don't recognize, you hold your phone up to it, it recognizes what Shazam calls a digital fingerprint and will spit back that information to you," Gallaga says.

Shazam is tagging the music and it tells you what the album is, with a link to where you can buy it.

"You're in the car and you hear something on the car radio, or in a movie, in a bar — it's actually able to cut through ambient noise to recognize the song," Gallaga says. "You have to be listening to an actual recording of that piece of music. You can't sing to it or use it at a concert. It won't recognize it unless it's a recording."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.