Introduction

Sony eMarker

Name that tune

It's happened to all of us at some point in time. Your cruisin' down the street in your '64. Jackin' the freaks and clocking the dough. A tight jam starts playing on the radio, so you bump it up and start praying for the DJ to actually tell you the name of the song instead of airing a wack phone conversation between him and some listener.

Of course, you know that the DJ isn't going to tell you the name of the song, so you quickly memorize a couple choice lyrics that could be possible song titles. If you're lucky, the radio station you listen to has an online playlist where you can try to look up the song. If that isn't an option, you face the daunting task of performing an online search with a handful of lyrics.

You could argue that the search is part of the fun, and it makes finding the song even more rewarding. Then again, you're probably someone who actually stops to smell the roses, and starts sentences with "it's not about winning or losing."

Oh please. We have things to do, terrorists to AWP, websites to launch, third-world countries to crush. For people like us, there's the Sony eMarker.

Sitting in the cradle

eMarker

The Sony eMarker is an ingenious $20 key-chain shaped gadget that helps you identify the title and artist of songs you hear on the radio.

You simply press a button on the eMarker to create an "eMark" whenever you hear a song you like on the radio. Each eMarker can record up to ten of these eMarks. Once you get home (or wherever your computer resides), you can hook up the eMarker to your PC through the USB interface and upload the eMarks to your personal "my emarks" page on the eMarker.com website. There you can find the name and artist for each of your eMarks. There are future plans to enable users to eMark songs outside their normal listening areas, and to eMark songs on TV.

Sounds simple enough, but how does it perform in real life? We tested out the eMarker for about a week. Read on to find out more about the eMarker, how it works, and how it performed in our testing.