Real Sucks
Boy, just when you think that Real may be coming round, yet again they remind you that they
suck.
Hey look, I'm all for companies making money - ya gotta do that - but the
thumb-our-nose-at-our-customer attitude that just seeps out of the
Real website
sucks the big one. Case in point - go and try to get the RealPlayer player
for Linux without using external resources (like Google). Go ahead. Try
to get it. What, no search bar? Windows-only client downloads? No options?
Yup. For those of you who just want it, here's the
form.
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...