A Tip for Exploiting Streaming Audio Via GPRS

If you enjoy the BBC as much as I do, here's a tip for speeding up the job of finding BBC Radio programmes:

If you are reading this on your phone, just click on this link to the Text only BBC Homepage.

Other wise, go to the BBC Homepage, scroll down a little bit (unless you have a massive, high-resolution screen) and click on the link that says, "Text only".

Voila!

You'll still have to scroll down a fair bit but at least you won't have to wait so long for the page to load.

Why not use the BBC's own mobile version of its site? Because I couldn't find their radio programme details or schedules ANYHWERE.

Oh, and as of this posting, the link to the World Service's Programmes was producing an error page.

Another silly problem...

I haven't had time to figure out if a piece of non-standard software is causing this problem or not but here it is:

1. Assign a Speed Dial number to an application.
2. Use the Speed Dial to launch an application, or to return to the application in the background.
3. On my phone, this appears to be exactly 50% successful. It works one time and not the next, and so on.

Strange.

That, I reckon, is Microsoft Windows (im)Mobile for you.

More on Streaming Audio...

Well, I successfully managed to pull up my WinSocks yesterday.

It's a sad fact but I had been technologically (and technically?) remiss even by the rather backwards standards of my jungle outpost here.

I am ever so slowly starting to see how the Xphone II CAN fit into a fruitful and satisfying tech lifestyle. The hardware faults will need fixing (headphone jack and frustrating navstick) and some of the OS crap will need to be sorted (if it can), but, alas, I am starting to see the light. More on this later. First, another chapter in yesterday's fun tale.

As you may recall, I finally got flat-rate GPRS. This means I can be "on the net" 24x7 without paying any more than the up-front fee. Suddenly, a whole new release of Xphone II user/ownership has been rolled out across the enterprise of life.

On the way home from work yesterday, I harrassed, harried and annoyed a good friend. I know. With friends like me, who needs an enema?

Friend was sitting at his desk in London, England. I was getting on the ultra-modern, clean and comfortable "sky train" on which I commute. You know, between my tree-top jungle lair and my hollowed-out volcano. Murhahahaha. The meddling fools. I could have saved the world, etc.

I fired up a live stream of BBC Radio Five Live and listened to the same, dreary, old traffic reports that used to drive me round the bend (or not, road way congestion depending) back in Ole' Blighty. Oh how the tables are turned, my old nemeses!!!

Firing up MSN Messenger (without any interruption to my new-found 5 Live pleasures), I chortled down the pipe to the UK, "bwahahahaha...."

Said friend was none too pleased to be reminded that while he sat contmplating his navel and wondering how best to set fire to his cubicle, when on earth it will stop raining, if they'll ever see the sun again and if copious cups of Rosie Lea can really truly ever get the damp coldness out of one's bones, I was reading my email, listening to the radio and chatting with him, while carried in air-conditioned, Asian-babe splendour on my 15 minute journey from the station near my office to the station near my home and, most crucially (for the purposes of said haraasment of said friend) the exquisite palm-tree-lined, outdoor swimming pool of my local gym, where I would soon be several stories above even the aforementioned train itself, laying in the hot afternoon sun like a Columbian drug lord enjoying the fruits of his immoral labours.

Say hello to my little friend.

How To Enjoy Streaming Radio on your Xphone II

I am ever so slowly discovering more of the joys of Xphone II ownership, which is a nice change from the evil chagrin the thing's been giving me more often than not.

I finally plumped for a flat-rate GPRS package from my ISP, oops I mean cellular service provider. Oh wait, what's the difference? I dunno, convergance consmergance.

So you do this:

1. Get flat-rate package. Trust me, unless your cellular company charges about a penny a day or something, you don't wanna start worrying about the mounting cost of being online via your mobile phone.

2. Fire up Pocket Internet Explorer or whatever browser and point it at something like Pocket PC magazine's online links list.

3. Choose something like Radio Show Links or Radio4PDA

4. Find a live station, show or on-demand stream you want. If given the option, choose the Windows Media stream.

Windows Media Player should fire up. In the bottom left of the player, above the "Playlist" soft button it should say "Finding", then "Connecting" and, finallly, "Playing"!

WOOT. Sweet or what?

Now (if you're old enough) think back a decade or so to when people were still being blown away by the wonders of 'The Innernet' and try to recall if anybody ever tried to say that we would one day be able to wander around the streets of (in this case,) Southeast Asia listening to live BBC World Service or Radio Five Live streaming via the net to their mobile phone, with almost no buffering and audio quality far better than anything I can remember "enjoying" from the majesty that was AM radio in the oh-so-glorious 1970s.

Now all I need is a sleeptimer for my new bedside radio, a nice cuppa tea and some digestive biscuits. And maybe a tartan blanket for my knees

ZZZZZzzzz.....