Freshly Squeezed Reviews: My ears rejoice
Posted by Frank Petrie 
Oct 4, 2007 at 5:58pm
OK. You can’t wait for Car Talk to come on each week. Your guilty pleasure. But it’s the school year and your playing Mommy/Daddy Taxi at your special time. So, you can listen to bits in the car, but it’s hardly a relaxing get-a-way. Do you have to write off your special time?
Au contraire, my little dust bunnies. Rogue Amoeba, the audio shareware cavalry to the rescue once again with Radioshift. Think TiVo for internet audio streaming and AM/FM radio (using Griffin’s Radio Shark).
Is it easy to use? We’re talking Rogue Amoeba here!
The Juice
Launch the US$32 application and you’re presented with the familiar Apple-style pane. A column on the left for your stations and the main body, which is split into three sections: Search, Popular and Favorites. With favorites you bookmark your favorite streams, shows and stations.
The GUI is extremely intuitive. You’ll be up and running in seconds. At the very top of the pane are four headings to get you moving: Home, Explore, Genres and World. Then each one of those are broken down into sub-headings
Preferences are laid out so that either your grandmother could set them (spoken voice or music) or you can go to Custom and select your bit rate and format of choice.You can also specify the audio editor you use (I would imagine the RA suggest that you use their editor, Fission) and to show the count of unheard recordings. You can also set it to wake from sleep or to power-up to record.
The Pulp
Nada.
The Rind
Nada.
The Summary
As usual, Rogue Amoeba does not disappoint. This is a powerful one trick pony. And it lives up to the standards of Rogue Amoeba.
This would be a perfect give this Christmas for friends or family who have moved across country or across the globe. They can still keep one ear firmly in their previous location. And as usual, RA wants your feedback and suggestions for additional features.
So, now drive that taxi with the radio off, knowing that you’re not missing a thing.
Macsimum rating: 10 out of 10
Radioshift is Universal Binary so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.
Frank Deleo Says:
Of course, since it’s quicker to download a program than to record it from a stream, it never hurts to check the iTunes Store (or the radio station’s home page) to see if it is available as a podcast or downloadable MP3. Car Talk has been available as a free podcast on the iTunes store for some time now, and just recently the BBC has greatly increased their podcast offerings.
Just the same, I’m a big Rogue Amoeba fan, and I’ll probably purchase Radioshift for those programs still unavailable as downloads.
Posted on October 04, 2007
Frank Petrie Says:
I should have picked a better example.
Posted on October 04, 2007
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Frank Petrie
Frank Petrie is a freelance writer, technologies and products specialist and curmudgeon-in-training.
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Matt Hodgson Says:
Cool, I wonder if they’ll add support for live flash streaming like on YouCastr.com or uStream.tv
Posted on October 04, 2007