Hasta La Gadget!

Right on the heels of iOS 7 beta 4 for developers comes the release of iTunes 11.1 in beta mode, appearing this afternoon with iTunes Radio ready for action. Announced at Apple’s developer event WWDC 2013, iTunes Radio is a personalized streaming music internet radio station service that becomes more personalized the more the user listens to it. This system will also be built-in and/or available to the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC, and Apple TV.

With iTunes Radio comes the requirement for OS X 10.7 or later, and usability limited to the USA for for time being. Inside you’ll see such categories as ’80s Dancy Party, Artists on Tour, Decade of iTunes, and simple concepts like “Alternative.” There’s connectivity with Twitter’s “#music” initiative with a category called Trending on Twitter as well.

You’ll be able to make your own radio stations with music you own, this service connecting with iTunes Match for advertisement-free streaming. There’s also a free version of iTunes Radio with “the occasional ad”, as Apple notes. With iTunes Match, music is all uploaded to Apple’s iCloud where it can be streamed with a web connection.

While there will be exclusive iTunes Radio songs and Siri will be able to work to command the changing and updating of stations, at the moment the service is limited. It’s time for developers to test this service out well before the public is able to get their hands on it. Time to connect Apple TV-based iTunes Radio to the desktop.

IMAGE VIA: 9to5Mac

iTunes 11.1 beta arrives with iTunes Radio built in is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

TV advertisers imagine that one day soon you might see a product on screen — say Don Draper’s whiskey glass or Daenerys Targaryen’s dress—and pause the program, click on the product and then instantly purchase it. Relatively primitive versions of this technology already exist, but the idea is far from new. Long before most people had even seen a TV set, this type of instant-purchase tech for television was already being imagined in the "radio" of the future. A radio set that also included TV with a swivel head, instant newspapers printed right at home, and a telephone that could reach the family car.

Read more…

Space is gigantic, so even though we have giant dishes trained to listen to it, we only hear a tiny slice. But scientists manning the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia stumbled on a few blips worth hearing: four mammoth radio blasts that came from far outside the galaxy.

Read more…

Apple’s new Radio service is now official and Pandora is coming under fire for being tight-fisted. Interesting, then, to hear of figures dug out by the Wall Street Journal which suggest that Apple is being every-so-slightly more generous with its deal.

Read more…

Everyone knows they should pull to the side of the road when an ambulance with its blaring siren approaches. But what if you’ve got the windows rolled up, the radio blaring, and can’t hear it coming? That’s not a problem in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where to increase emergency response times, the ambulances actually hijack nearby AM and FM signals to let drivers know they’re nearby.

Read more…