Many online music services allow you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to songs that you enjoy or don’t enjoy listening to. Jelli however leverages the thousands of votes logged by its users to build a better radio experience.
If you don’t fancy paying for movie downloads, TiVo has just expanded its service with an entirely free option: radio podcasts from the Nova and Vega networks.
Radio Beta is a web-based radio station aggregator with a host of features. Rather than simply serving as a search engine a basic playlist-builder, Radio Beta allows you to search radio stations by both region and genre, save your favourite stations, and as an extreme convenience play all the radio stations you find with an embedded player right on the Radio Beta website. If you’d like to visit the website of the station you’re listening, every listing includes the country, language, genre, city, the broadcast frequency and a link back to the source of the audio stream. Radio Beta [via Download Squad]
The Australian radio industry has been talking up the potential of digital radio — better signal, multiple channels, on-screen information such as who’s talking or what track is playing — for years, but never seems to progress much beyond limited trials. The situation doesn’t seem to be improving. Neil Shoebridge reports in today’s Australian Financial Review (the paper that doesn’t put its articles online, so no link, sorry) that a previous plan for full-scale capital city digital radio broadcasts to commence in January next year has now been entirely abandoned. May looks like the earliest possible starting point, and with a government deadline of July 1, further delays wouldn’t really surprise me. When I’ve played with digital radios before, I’ve been impressed with the sound and liked the extra info, but it seems to me that until we’ve actually got channels up and running with content you can’t get on conventional radio, no-one’s going to get that excited. Even then, the massive growth in online radio might have killed digital radio before it even began. Do you find the concept of digital radio tempting? Is your current car radio good enough for you? Have you abandoned conventional radio for podcast nirvana? Broadcast your thoughts in the comments.
DIYer RazorG illustrates how to make a cheap metal detector using an old AM radio, tape, and a calculator. Tune your AM radio with the volume on maximum onto the high end of the frequency but not directly on a broadcast station. Once you can hear the static from the AM radio, position the radio and the calculator (turned on) close together until you hear a loud tone. Then, tape the units together securely. You now have a working metal detector which you can experiment with by putting it near silverware or other piece of metal. This works, RazorG says, because the loud tone that comes from the radio is the calculator’s electronic circuit board which produces a radio frequency signal. The radio waves from the calculator bounce off the spoon and are heard on the radio’s speakers. Turn a Calculator into a Metal Detector [MetaCafe]
Windows only: Free internet radio application Screamer Radio is a streamlined audio ripping solution with a bonus in the form of a huge library of new stations to discover. Load up a Shoutcast, Ogg Vorbis, WMA or AAC stream, listen while Screamer sits in your taskbar and click once to record directly to MP3 or Ogg formats. Those who already have a favourite ripping solution, such as StationRipper, might still want to download Screamer just to grab a few new stations to try from its extensive preset list. Screamer Radio is a free download for Windows 98 and higher, and it looks like it can be run off a USB thumb drive as well. Thanks, Dan!
Screamer RadioSearch for radio stations online with iHeard, a search engine dedicated to finding internet radio stations. You can search by keyword, by category, by genre, country, etc.; if you don’t know what you’re in the mood for, try the Most Popular chart. Search results come back with a brief description of the station as well as a play button so you can start listening instantly. iheard [via Research Buzz]
