When I saw news about it yesterday morning, my first thought was Wow, now I can easily listen to NOAA Weather Radio from Little Rock AR. Perhaps not a great reason to spend $5.99 for it. What makes it worth considering is Wunderground’s partnership with RadioTime to offer easy, searchable access to many tens of thousands of Internet radio streams, utilizing RadioTime’s database to display station logos, as well as what’s currently on the air. The app also grabs your GPS location, and serves up a listing of nearby radio stations that stream

I don’t know exactly what the new Public Radio Tuner app from APM will offer (beyond the basic info we’ve heard), but the ability to get a listing of nearby station streams via GPS, and “what’s on” info are two nifty elements that could add some great new functionality to the APM app. RadioTime’s database isn’t always correct, but a closer partnership between station and developer (certainly the case with the APM product) could give stations more control over updating this data. I’m willing to bet APM is planning to include features like this in updated versions.

This whole mobile thing is exciting – it greatly expands our listening options when we’re out and about with our devices (iPhone and others) and when you combine it with the aux jack in your car, it’s an even bigger deal: now it’s not just your iPod’s library playing through the car stereo, now it’s KCRW while you’re driving to work in Louisville KY, WNYC while you’re driving in Chicago because WNYC has The Takeaway, or Chicago Public Radio while you’re walking to work in mid-town Manhattan because they don’t carry The Takeaway.

This is simply the next step in a transformation that’s really nothing new. The Internet doesn’t make the act of broadcasting to listeners obsolete; it probably won’t make the use of AM and FM transmission obsolete for a long time; but it does mean that I’m no longer a prisoner to what one, two or even three public radio stations are offering on the legacy radio in my area. If my local station’s Morning Edition sounds like crap, and I already know what the weather will be today, why wouldn’t I listen to Maureen on KPBS’s Morning Edition on my commute? I have more than a hundred different Morning Editions streaming to me at any given moment in the morning.

Izzi Smith was saying this way back in 2004 and 2005, holding up his Treo at conferences. Remember?

I feel a little awkward because APM announced this last Thursday and I’m blogging about it a week later. But I was busy at the programming conference. That’s why this is a blog and not the news, right?

The app has a lot going for it: it will feature audio streams from any public radio station that submits its stream (today is the deadline to be included in the first release, with weekly updates to deliver new streams), and stations get the nice extra of having their logo displayed.

You can get a sneak preview by checking out the MPR Tuner (shown here), released a few days ago. It features Minnesota Public Radio’s three streams; simple and effective. (Search for it on iTunes)

NPR Mobile’s service offers lots functionality to participating stations and end-users – access to updated newscasts, text stories, a link to donate – but it doesn’t include access to station live audio streams.

Streaming audio (and video) is becoming more important than ever in the mobile space, thanks to the explosion in mobile internet use, driven largely by the iPhone but also by other phones and PDA’s. And for the iPhone, apps and services like Public Radio Tuner and NPR Mobile are vital because they enable the iPhone to access streaming content.

If you’re a listener, check to see if your station is partnering with NPR Mobile and watch for the new Public Radio Tuner on the iTunes Store. If you’re a public radio station, you should be partnering with NPR Mobile and with APM.

At Louisville Public Media, we’ve seen an increase in the number of emails (and tweets) asking about this – no surprise, given the popularity of the new iPhone. Last week, we picked a specific app and recommended it on our station sites. I created a brief tutorial for those who need it.

• Louisville’s NPR News Station
• 91.9 Radio Louisville
• Classical 90.5

We investigated acquiring the capacity to offer a separate iPhone stream, but after consulting with WFMU, we decided the enterprise-level solution was beyond our budget – the ROI (number of people we could serve with the stream) isn’t enough right now to justify the investment.

So, we’re recommending Nullriver’s Tuner Internet Radio, which sells for $5.99 on the App Store. I chose the app because of my personal experience with it, and the large number of positive reviews from users.

Stations: are you seeing a pickup in listener questions about iPhone streams? What are you doing about it?

Some early responses:

Robin Lubbock, WBUR (twitter): “Yes, some interest in that.”

Ann VerWiebe, WKSU/Folk Alley (comments): “We’ve been recommending Nullriver as well, for both WKSU and Folk Alley. We actually developed our own Folk Alley app – but we’re still in the Apple developer approval queue. I don’t know that people have been begging for it, but especially for Folk Alley (which is only available as streaming media), it would be nice to have.”

Josh Andrews, Chicago Public Radio (comments): “WBEZ is on the verge of recommending the Nullriver option as well. We are waiting for an estimate on building out our own tuner app through the iPhone sdk, but I expect we’ll find that cost prohibitive. (Does Ann have a $ figure she’s willing to share?) I also tried to contact Nullriver about getting pubradio stations listed in their directory. No reply.”  

Thanks!

Todd’s Six Workflow Requirements

Your list may differ.

• * Syncing to-do lists
• * Syncing calendars, contacts, mail
• * Document access
• * Notes
• * Voice recording
• * Cross-platform blogging workflow

To-do

I need easy, ubiquitous capture to make my to do list effective and trustworthy, but I also need immediate access to the full list. I use Remember the Milk to capture long-range thinking (the “Someday/Maybe” stuff in GTD parlance) and Omnifocus for managing day-to-day lists and projects.

RTM is web-based and I have all kinds of ways to get stuff on the list. I can email tasks to the list, send them via IM or Twitter, enter them directly on the phone, configure a browser bookmark to popup, etc. RTM has excellent functionality and it’s easy to use. Since it’s web-based, there’s no need for syncing; your modifications show up everywhere immediately. If you use RTM in Firefox, you can take advantage of Gears technology to get offline access to all your lists.

Omnifocus has been a favorite of mine since it was in alpha release. It’s a thoughtful implementation of GTD and it’s packed with capabilities. The software is somewhat opaque, however, and it loses a point or two on usability. There are fewer open doors into the device, but the ones that matter to me are available: I can email tasks into the system, and with the launch of iPhone’s 2.0 software, Omnifocus introduced an excellent app that syncs to the desktop using either MobileMe or WebDAV.

I feel more tightly connected to my to do list than ever, and fun perks like Omnifocus’s ability to use GPS to remind you of tasks that you can complete nearby, add to its indispensability.

Calendars, contacts, mail

Do I need to say much about this? Probably not. I have Gmail and MobileMe accounts; I can work with my mail on all web-connected devices, and both accounts play nicely with Apple Mail, thanks to IMAP. Contacts sync across devices with MobileMe, and my calendars are a web of syncing: basically, MobileMe and SpanningSync ensure that any change made to any calendar gets expressed everywhere, from iPhone to iCal to GCal.

Contacts and Calendar data also port to my Windows desktop at work, and here, your syncing method depends on your platform. GCal can sync with Outlook’s calendar with Google Calendar Sync; MobileMe has a Windows client that pushes contacts and calendar data to Outlook, too.

Document access

This is even easier – choose your preferred puffy cloud and go for it. I use a few: Google Docs for things I’m doing at work, particularly for stuff I want to share with others. MobileMe’s iDisk lets me put all of my personal documents in the cloud and keep a synced local copy on my MacBook Pro; they’re also accessible on my Windows desktop and my phone. I’m also a big fan of Zoho Writer, and I’ve used Writewith and Buzzword with good results. Zoho and Google Docs have good iPhone interfaces, which will help keep you sane if you want to review a document using your phone.

Notes

One of the most annoying things about the iPhone is the land-locked nature of notes on the device. Yes, you can email them to yourself, but that’s not a way to maintain notes that are synced across devices. Into this gap steps Evernote, which brings its strengths as a note-taker and capture tool to the iPhone.

Evernote’s first appearance on the phone was as a web-app, which allowed little more than access to notes that one had already stored in the system. (Evernote allows one to capture notes, sync them securely to Evernote’s servers, and make them available on other computers, or even make them public.) Since then, Evernote has evolved into a full-featured app for the iPhone. You can create new notes, edit them, sync them with the server, and access or edit them on your other computers, using either Evernote software, or Evernote’s web interface.

It’s free, but Evernote limits the amount of content you can upload each month. If you upload a large number of notes, you can buy additional space, too. I keep notes for work and home, all of my receipts, pictures of business cards I receive (Evernote’s software can recognize text in photos and make it searchable), and scraps of code… and I come nowhere near to maxing out my free account. (I you upload lots of photos into Evernote, you’ll want the paid account.)

Voice recording

Sometimes, it’s easier to record yourself a reminder than take the time to transcribe it. Jott is a service I use constantly to record small bits of information, which then get transcribed by a nice person somewhere and sent to me via email or sms. Jott also lets you set reminders. The Omnifocus iPhone app lets you attach voice recordings to tasks for those times when your task is a detailed plan for taking over the planet. There are also several iPhone apps devoted to recording memos or complete meetings and lectures. I use QuickVoice for recording items that aren’t task-related. Recorded to-do list items move through the Omnifocus system as attachments to tasks. If, six months ago, you’d told me I’d be using voice memos as a task input mechanism, I’d have said you’re crazy. But it works for me.

Cross-platform blogging workflow

I’m not going to pretend that I enjoy long-form blogging on my iPhone. I like the keyboard, but not that much. Chuck, on the other hand, uses the iPhone WordPress app to write short posts and edit his blog. It works for him. I don’t mind writing short posts in that format, but mainly my blogging workflow depends on MarsEdit, where I can publish posts to a number of blogs, work offline, edit existing posts, etc. I also edit draft posts on my phone.

As for microblogging, I use Hahlo and Twitterific on my iPhone.

Will I always use both Google and MobileMe apps? Probably. As long as they sync to each other easily, I don’t think there’s any reason not to. I like knowing there’s some redundancy, just as I like knowing that when I’m offline, I have local copies of everything. Thus far, I’ve been a very lucky MobileMe user, with about 6 hours total downtime that I’ve noticed since the first days of the launch of the service. Everything has worked almost without a hiccup. (Others haven’t been so lucky.) Should my luck run out, I have something to fall back on.

There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s expected and it’s an important part of developing effective content when platforms or technologies evolve. But it’s a temporary state of affairs.

As Walt Mossberg notes in this talk, we don’t say, “I’m going to go on the electrical grid now with my toaster.” We say, “I’m going to make toast.” That’s because the electrical grid is ubiquitous and invisible (until the power goes out). Mossberg says the Internet will eventually be the invisible utility that connects all of our devices to our tasks, and “paying my bills online” will once again become “paying my bills.”

This talk is about an hour, and it’s pretty good. Mossberg also spends a chunk of time on cellphones and why they’re so important, and also why the iPhone is such an important bellwether for phones to come (hint: it ain’t the pretty browser; it’s what’s inside).

Worth your time, if you want to understand these developments better.

I experienced some calendar downtime for a couple hours on Monday, but otherwise, I’ve not had trouble. Syncing remains almost immediate between the iPhone and the cloud… around every 15 minutes as far as the computer is concerned.

I’m going to have to pay attention to this over the next couple weeks, and I have no intention of shutting down GCal, but I’m surprised how quickly I’ve taken to the calendar function on MobileMe.

So, to answer the question in the title of the post, not yet, but this bears watching.

The App Store will be revolutionary, and I’ve already and installed and started playing with about a dozen of them.

The one thing that does get my heart pumping is the 16GB hard drive. I bought my first phone on 6.29.07 with 4GB, an exercise in planned obsolescence: I figured I’ve save $100 and buy a phone with more capacity in ’08.

But I ran into trouble immediately. I loved the phone so much, used it so much, that 4GB wasn’t enough. I was constantly managing scarcity… juggling small chunks of my music, along with podcasts and audiobooks. I hope that with four times the capacity, I’ll spend one quarter of the time managing it.

We’ll see.

And hey, Chuck gets a (nearly) new phone tomorrow, too. So drinks all around.

FRIDAY UPDATE: A lengthy wait led to a speedy activation (4 minutes, vs. 7 hours for iPhone1 last year) and seamless transition to the new phone.

I’ll be transitioning to iPhone 3G on July 11th, but not without feeling nostalgic for the way Apple’s first iPhone changed how I view phones. (Is that too Apple-centric for your delicate tastes? Well, bite it, won’t you? Perhaps if I had owned a Blackberry, I’d be just as attached to it. But such was not my fortune. I owned a Treo 700p, which was the worst device – I went through two of them trying to get one that went longer than a couple hours without a reboot – I’ve ever purchased. Your mileage may vary; that was my experience.)

But the updated iPhone is almost secondary to the announcement (expected) of Mobile Me and the new commitment to cloud computing unveiled by Apple. I’m excited about the “push” data functionality that will extend to Mail, Contacts and Calendar. But what I’m really interested to see is how this will impact my current array of “software and cloud.”

At present:

Mail: Exchange via Outlook at work; Gmail and .Mac mainly through a browser, secondarily through Mail.app. iPhone accesses Gmail and .Mac mail through IMAP; doesn’t access Exchange.

Calendar: iCal and GCal, synced using Spanning Sync. At work, Google’s sync software keeps Outlook tuned to my GCal. iPhone gets iCal data through a thin white USB cable.

Contacts: Apple Address Book; Gmail contacts are built based on an occasional import of Address Book contacts. This is highly haphazard. Syncing through Spanning Sync’s new contact sync was marginally successful; syncing through Address Book’s new port to Gmail was successful but a big mess. A messy export from Address Book gets my contacts to Outlook. iPhone gets Address Book data through a thin white USB cable.

How will a more complete syncing experience – a more cohesive experience for all my devices, delivered by Mobile Me, assuming Apple actually delivers it – mean for my setup?

One possible scenario:

Mail: beginning next month, iPhone will work with Microsoft Exchange; OS X will extend Exchange to computers when Snow Leopard is released, apparently. That covers work email; my Gmail path may remain unchanged – IMAP; my Mobile Me email will become more compelling with “push” behind it.

Calendar: Mobile Me will maintain one calendar across my computer, iPhone, Windows PC at work and any other device I connect, potentially replacing Spanning Sync, Google’s sync software, and providing a solid challenge to the relevance of GCal in my workflow. iPhone will sync without the thin white USB cable.

Contacts: Mobile Me will easily maintain one set of contacts across all devices, including Outlook at work. And if I can get syncing with Gmail’s contact database to work the way I want it to, it will take care of Gmail, too. Again, for iPhone, no white cable needed.

What I’ve wanted for myself for a long time was the ability to put all of my stuff in the cloud and have access to it seamlessly across all devices. The first piece of that is relatively easy; the second piece has been problematic. Apple seems to be serious about giving users a new experience with the cloud, and I’ll be watching for indications that this is the case.

With those features working flawlessly, plus revamped photo sharing capabilities, document capabilities, and the doubled storage capacity of Mobile Me, it’s possible the successor to .Mac will bring us closer to Merlin Mann’s cherished .Mac dream, and bind those of us who use it more tightly into the Apple orbit, with a suite of tools that will make, to quote Merlin, your entire digital world safe, fun, ubiquitous, and flawlessly integrated.

In my personal scenario, who are the losers if this strategy works? Google Calendar, potentially Google Docs (at least as far as cloud storage of docs is concerned), Spanning Sync, Google Calendar Sync. I’m hesitant to look at my own patterns and divine some greater scenario in which Google suffers because of Mobile Me; for one thing, Google is so big, does it ever suffer? Second, Apple and Google have a great relationship and I would be surprised if their futures weren’t more tightly intertwined around apps like Google Docs, etc.

British broadcaster GCap is preparing to stream its music services to the iPod Touch and the iPhone, and offer users the chance to look up the last five songs played, as well as purchase those songs, either through the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com’s new download service.

Internet radio of most kinds hasn’t been available to iPhone users, but GCap’s engineers have found a way inside. (Future updates from Apple for the iPhone and iPod Touch may include Flash or Adobe Air, which might open the floodgates for radio streaming to these devices. We’ll see.) It’s a little buggy, apparently; the story I linked to says the stream currently cuts out when you click to buy a piece of music (taking you to one of the two stores).

I think it’s interesting to see a major commercial broadcaster dipping the toe into this space because it has a lot of potential – witness the AT&T/Starbucks deal. That’s not about making money from wifi, it’s about making money off all the stuff they think we’re going to do as mobile access explodes. And “explodes” is the right word – iPhone users are driving huge increases in mobile broadband usage in the US and Britain.

The other piece of this that’s fascinating is that it comes on the heels of GCap’s announcement that it’s shutting down it’s DAB services in Britain. They’re not commercially viable, says the company – and this in a country which has had one of the strongest content rollouts for DAB Digital Radio. BBC and others remain committed, however.

• I hate my phone call making device because it doesn’t work
• I hate my phone call making device because it works

I’m a victim of both. Why #1? Because my Treo 700P is driving me up the wall. It locks up constantly, and many days, I find myself rebooting it 7, 8, 9 times. I’m about to make demands that involve getting a new Treo, so that takes care (we hope) of that.

Why#2? Partly because I’ve never enjoyed phone conversations. Oh, I have my chatty moments, but most of the time, the phone is an intrusion that can’t be controlled except in two rather unsubtle ways – ignoring calls or turning the phone off. (My unreliable Treo offers a third way, completely out of my control.)

Is it good for messages? Voicemail is at the chimp level of message transmission. It can’t be scanned or organized. The new iPhone will display a list of voicemail messages and that will be a giant leap for humankind. In my last job, I was able to configure the system to email me my voicemail messages – an email with a tiny wav file. That was great because I could get around the archaic commands of voicemail that I could never remember. At my new job, we’re back to the world of *6, etc.

With the exception of perhaps three uses, the phone – for me – is an outdated, unhelpful tool. It’s good for meetings, and this was something I didn’t discover until about 3 years ago when I started participating in lots of conference calls. I don’t know what it is about a conference call – maybe it’s the voice pumped directly into my ears – but I often concentrate better during a call, and remember more afterward, than during a face-to-face meeting. There are also those times when email and IM simply can’t cut it – the wider bandwidth of a phone call saves about a dozen back-and-forth emails. Phone calls are good for interview situations – the high volume Q&A is more efficient over phone.

I’m a big fan of IM and I’ve used it for 10 years, at times intermittently, at times constantly. I think if there’s one drawback to it, it’s that it’s harder to control the intrusion. But when I’m in thinking or writing mode, I’ve learned to set the “away” to hold off the intrusion. To that end, the “leave a message” function in both GTalk and AIM is a nice thing.

Yes, so what have we learned? I’m a control freak. I do like to have a measure of control over the interruptions to my workflow. But I’m not so crazy as to assume I can hermetically seal myself off. What I have been reasonably successful at doing is getting people to email me rather than call. And I try to reward the email sender by being as prompt with my reply as I can be.