The enormous popularity of the iPod, and its dominant share of the market (some say as high as 95%) has created a new family fun game for reporters this Winter, which I call "Get Steven."

The idea is to find someone, somewhere, who can threaten the iPod's market dominance, then spin a story around it.

Most reporters do the easy story, interviewing all known competitors and repeating their claims.

Others, like Hiawatha Bray (right, from Dan Bricklin), know what their editors really want -- a local guy who claims he can take down the giant.

And that's what Bray delivered, in today's Boston Globe. (This is why he gets a fat paycheck and I'm just a blogger.)

Bray found a little outfit in suburban Andover, Massachusetts called Chaoticom. Chaoticom is OEM'ing technology for putting music functionality into new mobile phones, the kind with hard drives in them.

Good story. And since in the Chaoticom universe the music delivery is under the control of the carrier, there's some momentum.

Here's why it won't work.

A great music player is more than a hard drive. A great music player has great playback capability.

Today's phones simply don't.

It's much easier to add telephony functions to a great music player than to add music capability to a mobile phone, at today's price points.

But it's a nice story. Good one, Hiawatha.