Tech Blog

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By now you're pretty tired reading all the '2010 is the year of the eBook' articles out there. But what about eRadio? It's more prevalent but do you even know what it is?

Well, technically, it should be called Internet Radio, and it's been around for quite a while, but until recently it's not been that popular.

Wikipedia describes Internet Radio as:

Internet radio involves streaming media presenting listeners with a continuous stream of audio that cannot be paused or replayed, much like traditional broadcast media; in this respect, it is distinct from on-demand file serving. Internet radio is also distinct from podcasting, which involves downloading rather than streaming. Many Internet radio services are associated with a corresponding traditional (terrestrial) radio station or radio network. Internet-only radio stations are independent of such associations.

The main problems with Internet Radio popularity were hardware related -- broadcasters needed to get their signal into the 'tubes', and listeners had to have an Internet Radio application running on their computer, because in the past it required a computer's hardware to play the stream in real-time.

My current favourite on-computer media player (that plays Internet Radio) is Songbird a free music player that I've called the Best Music Player Ever...and still do.

One of the difficult things about using Internet Radio on the desktop is finding good stations, and that's where aggregation services such as Shoutcast come in. Shoutcast displays all the stations streaming their music using shoutcast servers, and there are thousands. Songbird ties quite nicely into Shoutcast, might I say

In the last couple of years, portable devices (like the iPhone, iPods, Blackberrys, cell phones)  have finally become powerful enough to let us listen to Internet Radio anywhere there's a Wi-Fi signal (or you can eat into your monthly data allotment). So you can take it with you and rock out.

And for the home, a new crop of Internet Radio Players is making the rounds. I've just received a Logitech Squeezebox Radio and will be reviewing it in the next couple of weeks, but my first impression setting it up this evening is positive.

So far, my first impression is one of a bit of freedom; in-home Internet Radio Players free you from having to use the computer to listen to Internet Radio. Reduced power consumption, no monitors, fans, hard drives, just an Internet Radio, playing jazz in the background.

Watch for my review in a couple of weeks, but I'm curious, how do you use Internet Radio, er eRadio? Streaming into your headphones at work or do you have a media centre you crank up to listen to the tunes. Let me know in the comments.