Captain's Log

yes.net

(Edit: yes.net doesn't work anymore, but you can try mobile.yes.net. See my updated post.)

Have you ever been driving somewhere while listening to the radio and tried to figure out what song is playing? Sometimes you can't figure it out, because you might not know the artist. Sometimes the lyrics are so hard to understand you can't remember a phrase to look for later. Or worse the only phrase you remember is something like "I love you." and there are 50 million songs with that line. Well here's one solution to this problem.

yes.net is a website that keeps track of what a lot of radio stations play on the radio. You can look up a station and a time (when you know you were listening) and see what was playing. The last 24 hours are on the page, and most popular stations (but not all) are listed. It's pretty neat and it might help you find out the name of the song you've been looking for. One bad thing is that it actually identifies the song by actually listening and looking for matches in a database. So if the song isn't in the database, then it won't show up. This was the case with the last song I was looking for, It's My Life by No Doubt because the song hadn't been released. I guess it does mean that it will catch requested songs, where as something that reports a playlist wouldn't.

This isn't a very new idea. Sony came out with the eMarker a few years ago that makes note of the time you heard the song, and then you can plug the marker into your computer (USB) and pick out which radio stations you might have been listening to. It's was a free service once you buy the product. I say was, because they discontinued the service a long time ago. I don't know why Amazon is still selling the marker...