While I was continuing my quest to decide whether or not I want to start doing a new podcast or not, I surfed around iTunes a bit this morning.
I downloaded some podcasts to see if I would actually listen to them myself, on a regular basis.
My attention turned briefly to re-visit some of the various music and radio clients as well as a few on-line music websites. I wandered around a bit on Last.fm, Blip.fm, revisted AOL Radio, and toyed around with the latest Microsoft Media Player.
They all have one thing in common ..they're a lot more than I need (or honestly have time for).
I started looking through some of the freeware I had used in the past and noticed that Screamer Radio, the freeware, adware free, spyware free, VERY lightweight PC radio player (and recorder) from David Zidar had been upgraded just last week to version 0.4.1.
This PC radio player has been around for a while, and just keeps getting better. The amount of available channels is LARGE and extremely easy to navigate. The sound is excellent and a variety of current formats are supported.
You can choose by genre, language, network, or country with just a couple of mouse clicks ... and your background music is hummin' away with almost no (or very little) system resources in use at all.
Discovery of stations is not only fast (and preloaded), but there are a few hidden gems in the directory from around the world (and even the latest regional US NOAA weather radio broadcasts that are currently available online). Like any player, there were a few 'missing feeds', but a search by genre yielded numerous choices that streamed just fine.
There are versions of Screamer Radio for older x86 machines running Windows (WINE compatible), as well for Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
There's a php forum and a developer blog (Check out the August 20 post .... talk about reverse compatibility!)
Screamer Radio is donateware so drop David a few bucks if you like it.
You can download one of four versions here.
...and drop a note here or on Friendfeed with YOUR opinion. I'm just curious.
My guess if very few of you will uninstall it.