Rich Trenholm
Rich Trenholm writes about digital cameras and other technology, except when he's writing about films, music and comics. He does not drink tea and never has.
Next: The iPhone's so good, I don't mind the price drop
Previous: Bricking it: How stud subculture reminded me of the awesomeness of Lego
Wednesday 9 April 2008, 11:47am
On my Radio(paq)
I really want Radiopaq to be awesome. And on the most basic level, it is. Radiopaq, now out of beta, is an Internet radio portal that allows you to search for and listen to Internet radio stations.
The choice is incredible. I've had a listen to what's rocking Slovenia, Sweden, San Marino... and that's just the places beginning with S. But with this much choice, we need better station search filters, and a more sophisticated genre/keyword search. There's no indie, just 'soft rock', 'rock' or 'hard rock'. It also requires plugins and doesn't have a volume control. And tells you to visit its 'techincal pages'.
Radiopaq seemed the perfect match with Prism, a project from Mozilla -- you may know them from such hits as Firefox and Thunderbird -- that creates desktop apps from Web sites. It essentially launches online mail, calendar, your Flickr account or whatever you want as a standalone application with none of the browser clutter. Sadly, Radiopaq and Prism won't play with each other.
Searching for an alternative I headed for Live365, which has everything I wanted in the interface: real-time tracklisting, decent search, a desktop mini-player and a volume control. Sadly it didn't have the BBC, so no 6 Music for me. The replacement of top duffer Gideon Coe with the endlessly irritating George Lamb softened that particular blow, however.
At home I have a BBC radio widget, but that doesn't do tracklisting or stations from around the world. I can't win. If you've got online radio sussed, tell us about it in the forums.
Live365 also bombards you with ads. Still, at least it introduced me to Whomix.trilete.net, a Web site consisting entirely of fan-made remixes of the Doctor Who theme tune. Who needs radio after all?
Articles by Rich Trenholm
Lady GaGa Monster Heartbeats: They're plastic but they still have fun
Crave Lady GaGa has lent her considerable artistic weight to the Monster Heartbeats. Guess how much they cost. No, go on, guess. Oh, you
Google Voice heading for Europe?
Crave Google Voice may be on its way to Europe. Google has revealed international deals have already been signed for the 'one phone number for life' service
Twitter retweets rolled out to beta tweeters
Crave Twitter has begun rolling out new-look retweets, with a counter, to selected users. Not before time, we say
Crumbs! Large Hadron Collider suffers snack-related bird mishap
Crave A bird has bombed a bit of baguette into the Large Hadron Collider, causing the giant particle accelerator to overheat. If a marmoset drops in some Marmite, we've got ourselves breakfast
Beatles on a stick: Crave alternative headline competition results!
Crave The news that every Beatles album will be sold on a USB stick launched a thousand puns. It's our first Crave alternative headline competition!
Ordnance Survey and GeoVation map the future with mashup competition
Crave Ordnance Survey is backing GeoVation, a competition to win cash for ideas that make the map of the future
Olympus E-P2: How's the view? Electronic, expensive
Crave Olympus has announced the E-P2, the second retro-styled Micro Four Thirds camera in the Pen range
MSN Music relaunches with free streaming
Crave MSN Music has relaunched its download store, and introduced into private beta a free streaming service
