Hear something cool on the radio? 'Nabb' it.

This week's Tech Test Drive column focuses on Nabbit, an ingenious new service for Twin Cities radio listeners who want to easily identify tunes for future reference.

They do this by clicking presets on their data-ready phones when tunes they like are playing, and later retrieving the tagged songs online, with all the details attached.

The service works with most recent-model cell phones, and with most commercial stations in the Twin Cities, which ensures broad compatibility. And, as I said in my column, the service is simple, useful and fun.

This gives Nabbit a leg up on other song-ID options that are more complicated, costly, limited and potentially prone to error. None of the following impress me as much as Nabbit does:

Verizon and AT&T both offer options for holding cell phones up to radios to identify songs. Verizon's V CAST Song ID and AT@T's MusicID are ingenious. I tested the Verizon version a while back, and I liked it. But these services depend on more-complicated technologies, are carrier-specific and require certain mobile-handset models.

HD Radio gear coming on the market includes iPod docks and iTune Tagging features, meaning a melody can be flagged while it's playing. This information is saved on the Apple player for later transfer to a computer for previewing, buying and downloading in iTunes. Clever, but you have to buy an iTunes Tagging-ready HD Radio receiver.

AOL Music's Spinner.com service has a service called "What's The Song" that lets users e-mail editors to identify songs they've heard in commercials, films, etc.

The Midomi.com service Melodis Corporation lets you find a melody online by humming, singing or whistling it into your Web browser. I heard this thing tested on a public-radio show not long ago, with decidedly mixed results.

I distinctly recall reading about a key-fob device that also did stuff along these lines, but I can't seem to find any trace of it online. If this sounds familiar, e-mail me. Thanks.

Nabbit, by the way, has a nice YouTube video that neatly summarizes what the service is about:

Update: Nabbit on KARE 11