Yahoo! Music LaunchCast

Yahoo!’s internet radio service allows you to listen to more than 250 radio stations through your browser window. Offers an eclectic mix of tracks, ranging from current chart-toppers to R&B, indie rock or Latin pop.

Sound Transit

Not a radio station in the traditional sense of the word, Sound Transit is more like an audio journey. Choose a start point and end point from a list of countries, and the number of “stopovers” along the route, then listen as you’re taken on a musical voyage across the globe.

Live365

One of the most comprehensive internet radio directories available, Live365 makes it incredibly easy to find the music that suits your taste. You can search by song type and genre, or take a lucky dip pick from the site’s list of daily recommendations.

Spotify

Choose from thousands of songs to build customised playlists – you can use Spotify free if you agree to listen to an advert every 20 minutes or so, or pay £9.99 per month for ad-free music. Exceptionally easy to use and with a very good selection of music, Spotify is fast becoming a favourite for dinner parties and barbecues. If you want to listen to Spotify on your home stereo, invest in an Apple AirPort Express Base station (£79, Mac and PC compatible, apple.com/uk) and hook it up to your speakers. Install a piece of software called Airfoil on your Mac or PC (www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil, £18 to buy, free to try), and you’ll be streaming internet radio, including Spotify, through your hi-fi in no time.

Birdsong Radio

The gentle sounds of the dawn chorus proved a huge hit with listeners, with more than half a million people tuning in every day to listen to a looping track of bird song. There was a public outcry when the station disappeared from the airwaves last month, but it’s back, available online through its own internet radio station. You can even buy a CD of chirruping and tweeting.

Radio Lab

A wonderful way to expand your scientific and philosophical knowledge. The hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich tackle some of the big questions in science and human experience, and attempt to help their listeners to expand their mind, and think about these topics in more detail on their own. An accessible show that manages to both make you laugh, and make you think.

Speechification

A blog which the creators call “not about Radio 4, but of it.” The Speechification blog is a large archive of what they deem to be the wittiest and most thought-provoking parts of Radio 4 over the years. Samples of other international radio shows are thrown in for good measure. The result is a great collection of hand-picked radio treasures.

WFMU

Broadcasting from New Jersey, Rolling Stone magazine called WFMU “the best radio station in the country”. Programming ranges from genre-bending music to popular jazz and rock standards. Always a pleasure to listen to due to its spontaneous and humorous nature.

Resonance

This self-styled “radio art station” is on a mission to cover “the new, the undiscovered, the forgotten, [and] the impossible.” In short, Resonance is a refreshing radio station that plays alternative, obscure and always pleasant world music. Between the songs, the presenters will use their knowledge of the arts to discuss and cover either the music they are playing, or anything from archaeological discoveries to sociological debate.

Soma FM

This listener-supported station has 14 channels, all based upon a different style of music than you might be used to. Some of the more quirky themes include ‘Secret Agent’, which plays tracks suited to the soundtrack of a spy movie; and ‘Boot Liquor’, which explores traditional American for who they refer to as ‘Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers’.

Beethoven

For those more inclined to classical music, this station brings you a schedule filled with programs dedicated to different periods, composers and genres.

Shoutcast

If you want variety in your internet radio, then Shoutcast is where you want to be. With hundreds of stations within its 24 genres and countless subgenres, covering everything from Bubblegum pop to Impressionist Classical, it will take you a long time to exhaust all the options.

Accuradio

Offers a great selection of stations within each genre. Great for classical listeners, with different stations dedicated to various instruments and periods. An alternative music streaming radio to Last.fm

Last.fm

This site allows the users to construct their own playlists based upon an artist or a genre of their choosing. For example, type in ‘The Beatles’, and Last.fm will play you artists such as The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, The Who, and a number of slightly lesser known artists. It’s an opportunity to create a station around your own interests, and to introduce you to artists you may not have heard of before.

You can listen to internet radio on your mobile phone too. Spotify, a music-streaming service, recently released an application for handsets running the Android operating system, and an iPhone application is said to be in the works. If your device runs the Symbian S60 operating system – that’s the software found on most modern Nokias, for example – and you’re up for a bit of technical tinkering, why not try installing the S60 internet radio client to access all of Shoutcast’s stations? You can find full instructions online. Alternatively, give Mobtuner a whirl. It’s free to install (although, as with all internet radio access on your mobile phone, you may incur a charge for data use if you’re not on an unlimited data tariff) and works with all Windows Mobile phones – get it by visiting mobtuner.com in your phone’s web browser.

Don’t swim after lunch

My Bloody Lad – Dead Walter – WIZZprod°

Future of Screen Technology
http://toptentechupdate.blogspot.com/
This is the result of TAT’s Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few.

Samsung has developed a touch-enabled transparent AMOLEDs, and has a very nice demo showing it off. Sadly we do not have any technical details about this display, or when Samsung expects to commercialize it…

We have some more information and a nice video about AUO’s 2.4″ transparent touch AMOLED display. The resolution of the panel is 240×320, and it’s a “dual-emission” structure. It’s got 45% transparency, 200 cd/m2 brightness on the bottom, and 100 cd/m2 on the top. The contrast is better than 20,000:1. The response time is less than 0.01ms. AUO hopes to have this as an actual product in 2011, and are also working on a 7″ version.

A short clip by CBS showing the ‘TV of the future’ – OLEDs. Some nice new footage of OLED displays and TVs, flexible and transparent OLEDs, as well as an interview with Janice Mahone from Universal Display.

• Director of Mind and Mood
• Vice President of Cool
• Chief Imagination Officer
• Intangible Asset Appraiser
• Director of Intellectual Capital
• Visualizer
• Creatologist
• Storyteller
• Court Jester
• Chief Morale Officer
• Goddess of the People
• Chief Dreamer
• Chief Catalyst
• Co-ordinator of Synchronicity
• Ego Enhancement Consultant
• Friction Arrestor
• Dream Broker
• Misconception Eradicator
• Chief Fulfiller of Needs
• Empresario of Equalities
• Carbonated Beverage Specialist
• Consultant of Leisure
• Director of Chocolate Flavors
• Director Of First Impressions
• Irony Consultant
• Laughter Therapist
• Word of Mouth Marketing Manager

Google changes search algorithm to favor large publishers over small-time blogs and websites last Friday in a move that shifted $1 billion in annual revenue to members of the Online Publishers Association (OPA).

The Online Publishers Association, an insider organization representing large websites and magazines, applied pressure on Google to adjust its search algorithm in favor of “quality” content as the industry continues to suffer declining subscription revenue.

“A private understanding was reached between the OPA and Google,” an office assistant with e-mail evidence told Politically Illustrated. “The organization is responsible for coordinating legal and legislative matters that impact our members, and one of the issues was applying pressure to Google to get them to adjust their search algorithm to favor our members.”

The e-mail correspondence provided to Politically Illustrated show the OPA going back-and-forth with Google over upcoming changes to the company’s search algorithm.

“We don’t care,” began an email from a top-level staffer at the OPA. “The algorithm needs to consider the quality of content because websites, including those hosted on Blogger, are stealing our stories – they’re simply re-writing them from websites produced by our members.”

Last month, Google went ahead and adjusted the algorithm after the e-mail correspondence.

The change hurt several hundred websites, including popular Cult of Mac.

“Cult of Mac has been downgraded by the changes Google has made to its algorithm to rerank content farms like Demand Media,” Leander Kahney, who is the owner of Cult for Mac, wrote on his website. “We’re not alone. Also affected is the British Medial Journal, PR Newswire, and one of the earliest online communities, The Well.”

Cult for Mac, PR Newswire, The British Medial Journal, and The Well are not current members of the Online Publishers Association.

“I’m pissed because we’ve worked our asses off over the last two years to make this a successful site. Cult of Mac is an independently owned small business. We’re a startup. We have a small but talented team, and I’m the only full timer. We’re busting our chops to produce high-quality, original content on a shoestring budget.”