I just lost two days of my life to Slacker Radio.<\/p>\n
Actually, the story starts earlier, with I Heart Radio.<\/p>\n
No, it starts before that with that labyrinth app, that Gwen Lewi showed me.<\/p>\n
I think it was Gwen.\u00c2\u00a0 I was over at her papa’s house, Jim Lewi, agent extraordinaire at the Agency Group, and I asked to see her iPhone.\u00c2\u00a0 Jim had told me she’d saved her own money to buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to see what apps she had on it.\u00c2\u00a0 She had that lighter, that you hold up instead of your BIC at concerts.\u00c2\u00a0 And she also had this labyrinth.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, like the old wooden games, where you tilt the playing field so the ball doesn’t fall through.<\/p>\n
I thought it was cute.\u00c2\u00a0 That an eleven year old was on the cutting edge.\u00c2\u00a0 But kids need the latest thing, the fact that you pay an extra thirty dollars a month for data is incomprehensible to them.\u00c2\u00a0 They need an iPhone the way we needed Cocoa Puffs.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ll do anything to get one, the same way contestants on "American Idol" will do anything to make it.<\/p>\n
Late last week, with an hour before I turned out the light, with\u00c2\u00a0 my TV on the fritz and having just finished my book about Mad River Glen, I got an inspiration to download the labyrinth app to my iPod Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 A device that I thought was fully useless when I got it as a gift fourteen months ago but that is now an integral part of my life.\u00c2\u00a0 Primarily because of the Sonos functionality.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d say the Sonos system was almost non-functional, because of the tiresome effort required to use the gargantuan remote, but the iPhone\/Touch app greased the skids, it was like waxing your skis, now I couldn’t wait to come home and fire up my Sonos system.<\/p>\n
Anyway, there’s a pay and a free labyrinth app.\u00c2\u00a0 I downloaded the free.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to become addicted, I just wanted to experiment.\u00c2\u00a0 The graphics were so realistic, and when you plug in the headphones the sound is astounding.\u00c2\u00a0 And it became clear that this is the gaming platform of the future. So I’m waiting for my plane in Eagle, with time to kill.\u00c2\u00a0 I can see whipping out my iPod Touch to play a few games.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I travel with the Touch, so I can surf the Web in bed.<\/p>\n
And I was lying in bed earlier this week when I downloaded I Heart Radio.<\/p>\n
The inspiration?<\/p>\n
I got an e-mail that mentioned the app.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no idea what it was.\u00c2\u00a0 But then Daniel Glass, in a phone call nailing down CMW plans, told me his young son Liam was addicted.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Marc Reiter told me his daughter Sophie used it all the time, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.<\/p>\n
You can download the apps directly on the Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 And they come down in a matter of seconds.\u00c2\u00a0 And then…<\/p>\n
I Heart Radio allowed you to listen to commercial radio stations all over America.\u00c2\u00a0 You just dialed in the city and then picked from the broadcasters. Very cool if it’s 1966, but who wants to listen to Clear Channel, with all its commercials and phony programming, in the twenty first century?<\/p>\n
The stations come in perfectly.\u00c2\u00a0 The sound is great.\u00c2\u00a0 Only the content is bad.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that Slacker had created an app.<\/p>\n
I’ve had a Slacker radio on my table for months.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just too much effort to power it up, update the stations…\u00c2\u00a0 Like I need another new device?<\/p>\n
So I downloaded the app.<\/p>\n
And there were built-in stations.\u00c2\u00a0 And I could create my own stations.\u00c2\u00a0 And I could customize them, telling the service whether I wanted "Hits", "Fringe", "Deep"…\u00c2\u00a0 And I create a Steve Winwood station, you can create as many as you want, and I hear a song from his new album that sounds so good.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the power of radio.\u00c2\u00a0 "I’m Not Drowning" didn’t make a big impact on me when I played the CD, but when I heard it on my Touch, doing my back exercises on my bedroom floor, I was enraptured!<\/p>\n
Then I discovered this great cut on the folk channel.\u00c2\u00a0 By an act I’d never heard of before.\u00c2\u00a0 Entitled "Apache Motel".\u00c2\u00a0 By this gay woman from Massachusetts, Erica Wheeler.\u00c2\u00a0 Brought me right back to my New England roots, made me want to go back home immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 To where it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the hit parade, but whether you’re good, whether you touch people’s hearts.<\/p>\n
Then there was that song by Eric Bibb, "Tall Cotton".\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like a Taj Mahal track, like Keb’ Mo’ when he gets it right.<\/p>\n
I’m discovering new music!<\/p>\n
But hearing a ton of crap.<\/p>\n
You can only skip six times an hour on each station, which is oftentimes not enough, so I contacted Slacker and they unlocked my account and I can fast-forward to my heart’s content.\u00c2\u00a0 ($3.99 a month.)<\/p>\n
Now what’s the difference between Slacker and Pandora?<\/p>\n
Well, I downloaded Pandora too.\u00c2\u00a0 Every radio app.\u00c2\u00a0 AOL, Shoutcast, Public Radio…\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the Public Radio app cracked me up.\u00c2\u00a0 You can listen to all the NPR stations in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I dial up Alaska, where they’re going on about the natives…fascinating!<\/p>\n
AOL…\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t see what their future is.<\/p>\n
Pandora…\u00c2\u00a0 Their app is simpler than Slacker’s.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s more efficient.\u00c2\u00a0 If you skip a track, the next one comes up right away.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to wait for the buffer to load with Slacker.\u00c2\u00a0 Slacker’s got more info, but you want the music more than info.\u00c2\u00a0 But the bottom line, to my perception, is that when you create your own station, you hear a lot of stuff you don’t want to.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Pandora is, suggestions based on your desires.\u00c2\u00a0 Slacker has the same problem on listener-created stations.\u00c2\u00a0 I like Jackson Browne and…Journey?\u00c2\u00a0 But on the Slacker-created stations, the programming can be quite excellent.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like satellite radio without the satellites.\u00c2\u00a0 Programming hand-built by experts.<\/p>\n
But I’m at the beginning of the learning curve.\u00c2\u00a0 And you need to be too.\u00c2\u00a0 You need to get an iPod Touch immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 Or switch to AT&T and get an iPhone.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I have seen the future, and it is not Bruce Springsteen, but the App Store.\u00c2\u00a0 This is as big as the computer revolution of the eighties.\u00c2\u00a0 This is just about as big as the Internet revolution of the nineties, spearheaded by AOL adoption in 1995.<\/p>\n
And Apple is the new AOL.\u00c2\u00a0 But with even more power.\u00c2\u00a0 The Web killed AOL’s closed garden.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s Apple’s closed garden that is dominant now, and will be for quite a while, if not forever.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got the store, they’ve got the development.\u00c2\u00a0 Rumor today is Dell is going to offer a smartphone. But it’s not about hardware, but software.\u00c2\u00a0 The Google Android app offerings are miniscule, and without critical mass, development is not only stifled, people flock to Apple, to interact with their friends.\u00c2\u00a0 As for Palm’s Pre…\u00c2\u00a0 If it doesn’t get sued out of existence, the lack of development will hamstring it.<\/p>\n
Voice is almost irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 You communicate with data.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only information, but location.\u00c2\u00a0 And the apps are all not toys, some truly aid your business.<\/p>\n
I own no Apple stock, I get no kickback.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m just giving you a heads-up.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you buy one of these devices immediately, and install a ton of apps, you are being left behind.<\/p>\n
If radio’s got a future, it might just be on the iPhone\/Touch.\u00c2\u00a0 Check it out.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me if you don’t agree.<\/p>\n
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