Hurray NPR!

Hurray NPR! I'm finally able to listen to the daily NPR programs that I often don't get to hear, like Morning Edition and All Things Considered - and the folks at NPR have made available via realaudio stream the shows right after they've finished their US broadcast. In other words, I can listen to today's Morning Edition at 9:00AM PST, right after it finishes playing on KQED, my local radio station.And through the magic of a linux box connected to my stereo and a great little program called trplayer, I can listen to realaudio streams without having to put up with those annoying take-over of your computer pop-ups that the current Real client imposes on people. And, since it is playing over my stereo, it sounds just like the real thing - I can't notice a difference. Now all I have to do is create a little cron script to auto play my favorite NPR programs on demand, and attach it to my MP3 web server. Thankfully, the NPR folks have created a logical URL system that I can put into a script. One more step towards having a RiVo - a TiVo-like device for Radio. I was wondering how I would do this with such a limited number of radio stations out there, but now I know - I can do it by recording streaming media onto a hard disk so that you can take it with you wherever you go and listen, just like an MP3 player. Imagine...