Shazam is an app for the iPhone/ iPod Touch that is so cool it is one of the first things you show off to friends. Its function is simple, the technology behind it definitely not. What Shazam does is identify songs by listening to them. You hear a song on the radio in your car and you want to know what it is so you fire up Shazam on the iPhone. It listens for a few seconds and then tells you the song, the artist, and even offers you a one-click purchase of the song.

Shazam has been one of the best free apps for the iPhone since early in the iPhone product life.  That changes with the introduction of Shazam Encore, a pay per view listen version that removes all limits from the free version. Specifically the free version of Shazam now limits you to 5 tags per month, and the Encore version offers unlimited tags. You’ll pay $4.99 at the App Store for that unlimited tagging in Shazam Encore, but you’ll also get these features:

• Improved speed performance: making it even quicker for users to tag tracks and learn more about their music.
• Music recommendations: users can discover other music similar to the track that’s been tagged to enhance their music collection and knowledge.
• Find what’s hot and popular: Shazam music charts generated by millions of other Shazamers can be accessed to help users keep up to date with the new tracks and players in the music scene.
• Search music: easily find music by artist, album or track from over 8 million songs.
• Drive and Tag: Shazam automatically enters into car mode when the iPhone is placed in an in-car dock to make it simple to discover what’s playing on the radio even when driving.

Note that existing Shazam owners still have unlimited tags, only new customers of the free version have the limit. The $4.99 fee for Shazam Encore is a one-time fee.

Sure the Motorola Droid has a 5 megapixel camera over the 3 megapixel sensor used by the iPhone 3GS. But as most all of us know, size doesn’t matter. Put another way: more megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean a better still picture. Andy Ihnatko took aim at the Droid with his review and comparison at the Sun Times, but he also has a Flickr photo set to compare output from the two cameras.

After looking at his test set, most of the iPhone photos look better to me in most cases. Of course, that’s subjective, so you should peep with your own eyes to see the difference. It looks like the advanced software camera features of the iPhone are helping to take better shots thanks to focus and exposure functions. Of course, the Droid could gain similar functionality through a software update in the future. If video is more your thing, then I’d say the Droid wins by a hair. Based on video output I’ve seen, the 720 x 480 output looks a tad better to my four eyes.

The medical profession is always looking for ways to improve patient care, while keeping the costs to do so as low as possible. Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida has been outfitting nurses with iPhones running the Voalté One patient care program since June. The Voalté One packages leverages voice calls, patient alarms and text messages to notify nurses of patient needs, and the program is being claimed as successful so far.

“The nurses have embraced the technology and have given us great feedback,” said P.J. Floyd, Associate Chief Nursing Officer at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. “The Voalté One makes them better able to respond quickly to patient’s needs.”

The hospital has noted a 78 percent drop in overhead paging as a direct result of implementing the Voalté One program, and the patient wings are quieter as a result. This can play a big role in the healing process, as anyone who has required hospital care can attest.

Time for our Wednesday feature that highlights some of the latest iPhone news! Apple is tooting its own horn today with the official announcement of over 100,000 apps available in the iTunes App Store. That’s definitely an accomplishment unmatched by any other mobile platform and adds to the appeal of Apple’s handset. While I wish there were more apps for my Palm Pre, I’m totally overwhelmed by the number of iPhone applications. As more are added, it’s becoming difficult to know what’s out there that’s new and useful — at least when I browse in iTunes. I’m learning more about the newest apps from reviews on websites and through Twitter suggestions. Will the App Store eventually get so big that it actually starts to turn consumers off because they just get overwhelmed? Hopefully not, but it’s worth watching as a potential trend. Even with all of these apps, some estimates show that only one-fifth of them are used by the masses. And I’m still worried that platform-specific “killer apps” could influence handset purchase decisions (subscription required), which is something I don’t want to see.

One killer app is more like a feature that we in the U.S. can’t officially have on our iPhones — Internet tethering. I’m still running iPhone OS 3.0 because the tethering hack won’t work on higher OS versions. Or at least it didn’t. MobileCrunch reports that applying the hack after jailbreaking the current iPhone OS does get tethering back. I’m not too keen on the jailbreaking scene, but I’m seriously tempted — I’d hate to upgrade and then lose my backup 3G connection. And I’m running into more and more apps that require a higher version of the iPhone OS than I have.

Although we tend to focus on iPhones for this weekly update, I wanted to expand the scope slightly. Yup, I’m going there with the Apple Tablet again. I had a guest video spot on the TechVi show this week and we talked about the possibility of Apple offering iTunes TV content for $30 a month. I have no idea if Apple is doing that (or planning a slate tablet), but there’s an interesting opportunity when you combine the two mythical ideas. What would you get when you cross a portable 1280 x 720 slate running the iPhone OS with a monthly iTunes all-you-can-eat plan? I’d call it a reasonably compelling product. Not only would you have access to various television content in high-def, but you’d have your music and 100,000 apps for bite-sized functionality too. Hmmm….

You’re planning on watching the big game and you absolutely must have hot wings to set the mood? There’s an app for that for the iPhone — Kluckr. Iphonemvp recently reviewed the $0.99 and while they felt it is more suited to be a free app, they did rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars so they must have found some finger-licking good wings.

You iPhonistas put off heading to the App Store because it’s just too vast? Too many aisles, too many apps to possibly wade through? If only there was a way to get people you trust to recommend good apps to prevent you having to mindlessly search over and over? There’s an app for that. Chorus will need some time in the wild to get the recommended user database built up, but it’s a solid idea that may come in awfully handy.

Chorus replaces the App Store with a nice interface, and essentially does away with “Top Lists.” Those are strictly determined by number of downloads, and we all know that’s not a reliable indicator of which apps are the gems. No, Chorus only picks top apps based on recommendations from trusted users. These include those you designate over time as your personal advisors. There really is an app for everything.

(via Gizmodo)

In this day and age, can you believe I’m excited about a “manual entry” feature? Yup, it’s true. While everyone else is looking for automated ways to ease life’s burdens, I want manual entry. And I just got it in the latest update to RunKeeper for iPhone. I reviewed this activity monitor last month and showed you on video how the application uses GPS data to track running, cycling and more. Many commenters rightly pointed out that there’s no way to track exercise done while stationary, like on a treadmill or cycling trainer. But now you can. In fact, I just broke the 4-minute mile barrier on RunKeeper — all from my couch. How amazing!

Version 1.7 adds the manual entry bits, but also includes other useful updates. Audio and visual pace cues can now indicated your average pace over the entire exercise duration, not just your current pace. Split times and new interval training visuals were added too. These little enhancements will go a long way towards helping me as I move my running and biking activities from the roads to the basement.

While all eyes are on the current baseball World Series (go Phils!), professional basketball kicked off a new season earlier this week. What’s a die-hard fan without Picture in Picture to do as our eyeballs compete to watch both sports? Even worse — what if you’re on the go when your favorite hoops team takes the court? NBA League Pass Mobile for iPhone and Android can assist in this case.

Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee takes an early look at this $39.99 season pass application and came away generally impressed. The software and subscription provides access to 40 games each week, although any local team events could be blacked out — the app cleverly uses your handset’s GPS to define “local.” You can see by the screen cap above that streaming over Wi-Fi looks great. Streaming over 3G however, was hit or miss during the NewTeeVee testing, which is semi-surprising — the application uses adaptive bitrate streaming, but of course you have to have some minimum throughput for even that to work. I like how there’s some DVR functionality in there — it’s always nice to replay that killer slam-dunk.

The new NBA League Mobile Pass is due to appear in the iTunes App Store and Android Market any time now, so with luck, you’ll have access before the next tip-off.

I’ve made no secret of how I use Remember the Milk for all my task management needs. One of the strengths for me is the way RTM works on so many different platforms, so making it always in my pocket when I need it. The RTM folks let me know that the iPhone version of the program has just been updated. The new update brings Smart Add capability to the iPhone version.

What is Smart Add? That’s the natural language method for task entry that the program properly translates into a real task. You can create tasks like “Pick up the milk tomorrow”, “Order stationery #work”, “Return books in 2 weeks @Library” and the program will intelligently make the proper entry into your task list. A good program just got better, and that’s always a good thing.

RTM for the iPhone requires a Pro account, and that is currently $25 for a one year subscription. The Pro account opens up the ability to use RTM on the iPhone, Android phones and more.

Time for our Wednesday feature that highlights some of the latest iPhone news! That’s a tough road to hoe with all of today’s talk about the Verizon Droid, but I’ll give it a go. But since I mentioned Verizon, it’s probably worth pointing out the latest talk of Apple’s iPhone appearing on the network. Apple Insider says a recent analyst report indicates it could happen in the second half of 2010. I still contend that Verizon may not need the iPhone as it once did. Aside from the Droid, more Android handsets are on the way as is the Palm Pre and the Storm 2 — which launched today with barely a whimper due to all the Droid news.

Speaking of news, I read today that the iTunes App Store is at or near 100,000 titles. That reminded me of an excellent John Gruber post on “quality vs quantity.” The Daring Fireball writer echoes my thoughts — if the quality of the apps are better on Android, webOS or some other platform, he’d switch. I hedged my bets by supplementing my iPhone with a Palm Pre, but that was for the operating system. Curious how many of you have switched or adopted a smartphone platform simply because the of the quality of the apps?

While you ponder that, have a look at the below video from junaio, an augmented reality iPhone app in the works. If I have this right, you can add virtual objects to the live camera view which is showing other virtual objects. The video probably explains it better than I do, but it appears that you can create or add items in the virtual world for others to see.

junaio from junaio on Vimeo.