How technology and a cup of coffee brightened a stranger’s day

Yesterday I was having lunch at my new favorite coffee shop when a man sitting at the table next to me asked me if I knew who sung the song that just played on the radio.

I wish he had asked me while the song was still playing. I would have jumped at the chance to whip out my iPhone and show off the song-recognizing Shazam application. But the song was already over so I was put in a Shazam-less situation.

But that wasn't going to stop this techie. Not even after this man's futile attempts to actually sing the song to me. I know that many radio stations now keep a playlist of the songs they play on the radio. Some even tie their playlist into the Apple iTunes Store to earn additional revenue when people click through from their web site to the iTunes Store.

The first step was to find the radio station on the Internet. Luckily, I knew what station was playing in the coffee shop so I did a quick Google search for WTTS. The first result on the search page was the radio station's web site. A quick once-over of the web site led me right to a link on the right sidebar that read WTTS Playlists.

I clicked the WTTS Playlists link which brought up a list of the past 20 or so songs that had just played on WTTS. I jumped one song back and discovered the artist from the previous song was Cold Play. I walked my laptop over to the man's table and asked, "Is Cold Play the artist you were trying to think of?"

Based on his enthusiastic response, I think I made his day. Just another life in the day of a techie.