Mango's Music Search: Behind The Scenes

"The basic scenario is that you're listening to some music that you've never heard-or you hear a song you like but don't remember the name of it. In Mango, you can just pull out your phone and within seconds get the name of the song or artist and also a link to the Zune music store so you can download or buy it."

Cool stuff - the upcoming Mango update will feature Music Search, which promises to put a name to that tune which you just can't quite remember the name of. The best part is the description of how its done, and why Music Search can potentially return results almost instantaneously - sound is monitored continuously, and "fingerprinted" rather than sampled, which promises to cut data use substantially.