Posted Friday, July 16, 2004

Friday Grab Bag: More Cool Old Radio, Some Cool New Radio

It's been more than two weeks since I've posted anything! Shameful. Was it because I was in Boston at Macworld Mini? Nope. I stayed home -- partly to attend a family get-together in Palo Alto, and partly to ramp up for next week's Digital Design World conference in Seattle. I'm the Conference Chair of the Web design portion of the event, a role I've had since 1997.

I'm still on the swamped side, but I did want to let you know about a couple of radio-related developments.

More great old radio. Back in May, I wrote about RadioLovers, a site containing hundreds of classic radio shows that are free for the downloading.

Yesterday, while researching an upcoming Macworld article, I stumbled on two more sites that radio lovers should enjoy.

If you're like me, you grew up listening to at least some Top 40 radio stations of the 60s and 70s. Have I got a Web site for you. It's called Reel Radio, and it's a collection of more than 1300 aircheck tapes -- recordings of radio shows made by the DJs and hosts themselves.

There are some classic gems here, and some great DJs from around the country (including some from my home town of Pittsburgh). You'll not only hear the songs from that era, you'll also hear all the DJ banter and all the commercials. There are enough aural gems here to keep your ears busy for months.

Reel Radio streams its recordings in RealAudio format, so if you want to record them and add them to you iPod, you'll need to use a program such as Audio Hijack.

More hits from the Tri-State area. Thanks to the Links page on Reel Radio's site, I found Jeff Roteman's Radioville, another treasure trove of radio lore and recordings. Radioville specializes in many Pittsburgh-area radio giants from my youth: KQV, 13Q, WTAE. Chicago's titanic WLS is also represented here, among others.

Radioville also streams its content in RealAudio format. Note: The site makes obnoxious use of pop-up ads.

Back to the present. Tonight, I'll be a guest on Gene Steinberg's Internet radio broadcast, The Mac Night Owl LIVE. The show airs from 6 to 8pm Pacific time. We'll talk about Tiger, iLife, and much more.