THIS AIN'T YOUR FATHER'S BLUEBOX!

The other day, the Internet Radio Players that I had downloaded into my Sony Playstation Portables had stopped functioning. About a week later, Sony made it known that they were overhauling these same players. But meanwhile, I had discovered not one but two third-party freeware Internet Radio Players from the following two sources.

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http://pspradio.co.uk/
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http://pspradio.co.uk/sc/

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Both players work on both Sony and PSP homebrew operating systems. The first address provides a really neat custom player with many useful features while the second address offers a custom Shoutcast-only option. But the most important aspect is that we can now install addresses for almost any audio stream available. Quite a step up from using a Sony Internet player with factory established channel presets and no option to choose beyond those. While there is a virtual universe of audio feeds offering anything from any conceivable genre of music to police scanners to old time radio, here is a one address worth plugging into.

http://gamebird.ehhh.us:8000/bluebox.m3u

This stream is billed as BLUEBOX RADIO which offers a continous program schedule of what appear to audio books, the content of which is mostly science fiction based. In the just the past few days, I have tuned into The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, stories by Arthur C. Clarke amd much much more. The stream was established and maintained by Byron Lee. Mister Lee is involved with an organization known as Horizons For The Blind and also has a background in audio post production and conducts a number of Internet radio programs which can be heard over SkyScanner Satellite Radio and Radio Free Dishnuts.

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BLUEBOX RADIO can be copied on any contemporary computer system and not just Sony PSPs, which I use as a kind of portable 2.4 GHz wireless radio.

The KXKVI TWIAR Podcast Portal! The Other TWIAR Podcast Download Site!

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The other day, while in QSO on the local 146.82 machine, George W2XBS asked if I had been downloading any This Week in Amateur Radio podcasts lately. I said I had not in quite some time due to issues with the various webpages that provide TWIAR and TWIARi RSS feeds. For retrieving podcast downloads in the field , I have been making use of my Sony PlayStation Portable 2000. The Sony PSP is first and foremost a portable videogame console, which in addition to the proprietary UMD videogames and motion pictures, can also reproduce WAV and MP3 audio files as well as MP4 video.

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But there is more. The PSP is capable of accessing wireless Internet hotspots, has it's own onboard web browser, Internet radio, RSS feed for podcasts and access to Skype. When it comes to transacting podcast downloads, there is usually little or no problem since most commercial sites provide pages which are light on HTML components such as graphics, video, audio, advertisements, pop-ups and other behind-the-scenes junk that makes a webpage a beautiful thing to view.

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But the Sony's primary limitation is that it does not have the same power that a conventional laptop or desktop computer can offer. While the transmission speeds are whatever the wireless access point provides, the time needed to electronically assemble the webpage inside the PSP brainiac may take much longer. Thus, if the target location is heavily bloated with all sorts of digital detritus, then the page becomes a liability for the PSP user and there will be no point in pursuing the attempt any further. "Detritus", by the way, is a five dollar word, used by crossword puzzle authors and science fiction writers everywhere.

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Unfortunately, many of the available This Week in Amateur Radio download sites are indeed quite bloated but this is not so much their problem since the vast majority of users will be arriving via their desktops and laptops. However for the Sony PlayStation Portable user, it's another story. According to George, who has performed some background observation on the types of devices that download the TWIAR podcasts, there are a fair number of folks making use of the PSP for just that purpose.

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So in our recent QSO, we came up with a simple solution. Since George was sitting on a second undeveloped Blogspot account, we could follow a model established by commercial websites such as eBAY and compose a podcast page devoid of anything...except TWIAR and TWIARi RSS feeds. Nothing but the links. SO! If you have a SONY PlayStation Portable or any other similar wireless device, plug in the following address http://kxkvi.blogspot.com/ and go get those TWIARs right now!