Such are the bits of info and, of course, other treasures and pleasures that one can find in the world wide radio of the Internet. Internet radio stations and other sites that offer online live broadcast provide a gamut of music, news, sports highlights and other blah-blahs that keep listeners updated on the goings-on in different parts of the world and calm harried workers hunched over their computers on a hectic working day.
Radio, the traditional boom box weve been familiar with all our lives, is not what it used to be. Stations play the same "new" music hour after hour. Though you like Creed, listening to Scott Stapp sing about his sacrifice five straight times makes you realize that theyre just a bunch of hillbillies who just happened to know how to sing and play the guitar.
Enough of that. Internet radio stations and sites offer not just music and news. Some provide features that lets you program your own station. Thus, you get to hear all the music you want everytime, everyday without the reruns and without the Britney Spears, Mandy Moores and the Aguileras. Heres a few sites where you can get music, news and more. So dial up, tune in and sit back.
Users can also opt to create their own stations. Once they do so, theyll be asked to choose the music genres (blues, country, electronica, folk, holiday, jazz, miscellaneous, pop, R&B, rap, religious, rock, shows and movies, and world) that they want their personal station to play. After selecting their preferences, a special console pops up onscreen that enables listeners to increase or decrease the volume, find lyrics, and rate the song thats playing as well as the album and the artist who made it. If you want, for example, Puddle of Mudds Blurry to play again in the future (not in the next hour), simply rate it 100. If you want to ban Linkin Park from your stations playlist, just click the "x" at the bottom of the rate meter.
Users can also check out videos, artist profiles and exclusive interviews at launch.yahoo.com.
So we moved to espn.com. What we found was not the promised land but itll have to do. Espnradio.com broadcasts sports news and updates through its ESPN News service. Users can access this for free 24/7. Though it may not provide blow-by-blow accounts of whats happening on the hardcourt, ESPN News gives regular summaries of the NBA games and other sports.