Hasta La Gadget!

A wee bit of the fanfare was taken out of the Squeezebox Radio announcement when the FCC went ahead and told us all about the party before Logitech had a chance to jump out from behind the sofa and yell “Surprise!” Expected or not, we’ve now got ourselves a streaming radio for testing in the house. It has a trendy, piano-black, fingerprint-magnet coating on the outside that looks classy as long as you can keep it clean, separate volume and scroll knobs on the front, and a little handle on the back that could make it a nice portable. However, without the optional battery pack, this thing isn’t going far. We haven’t had a chance to pump any tunes through either its Ethernet or 802.11b/g connections just yet, having barely turned it on and told it our language (Hola!), but we’ll report back in the very near future with a full set of acoustic and functional impressions.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Wireless

Logitech Squeezebox Radio unboxing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By most accounts, today’s Apple event wasn’t exactly action-packed. In fact, most of the surprises revolved around what Apple didn’t announce, rather than what it did. The biggest surprise at the event, however, was also one of its most minor announcements: FM radio.

Sure, much of the event revolved around the iPod nano, but it was the expected addition of a camera to the rear of the device that caused the most commotion. Steve Jobs more or less glossed over the addition of an FM radio tuner to the device–maybe because he’s finally eating crow.

Sirius XM, the satellite radio service provider, is set to introduce a satellite radio dock called XM SkyDock for the iPhone and iPod Touch, says the XMFan.com website.

The company has scheduled a press event on Wednesday to talk about new products.

The SkyDock will turn the iPhone or the iPod Touch into a satellite Sirius XM radio receiver. And it is expected to come with a wallet-friendly price tag of $100. Customers will still have to pay subscription fees for the service but this product makes satellite radio an exciting possibility for iPhone or iPod Touch users.

In June, Sirius XM released an iPhone app for their service. But the application left out many of the most popular shows on the network such as Howard Stern, MLB games and NFL because of  contract issues over the right to stream to phones.  We hope the SkyDock won’t be crippled with similar problems.

Sirius also plans to introduce a new XM radio with color screen for $80, says XMFan.com

Photo: (ckelley/Flickr)

See Also:

• Sirius XM Releases ‘Lite’ iPhone App. WTF?
• Sirius Hops on Podcast Bandwagon
• Finally, a Sirius IPod Threat

This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn’t want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back — so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We’ll be handing out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff / companies stop sending things. Today we’ve got a boomin’ VTech IS9181 internet radio on offer, ready to stream jams from the world wide web when not playing back your MP3 collection. Read the rules below (no skimming — we’re omniscient and can tell when you’ve skimmed) and get commenting! Check after the break for some photos of the prize!

Special thanks to VTech for providing the gear!

The rules:

• Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your proposal for “fixing” the world economy, that’d be sweet too.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) VTech IS9181 WiFi radio. Approximate retail value is $199.99.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Entries can be submitted until Wednesday, July 1st, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Engadget’s recession antidote: win a VTech IS9181 WiFi radio originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are you just now coming to the stark realization that you’ve nothing whatsoever to do this weekend? Calm down, there’s no need to freak out. Thanks to Jeff Keyzer over at mightyOhm, you can now get to work on your very own DIY WiFi radio. In one of the most elaborate how-to guides we’ve ever had the pleasure of gawking at, Jeff has detailed exactly how to turn an ASUS WL-520gU router, a few spare pieces of wood and a couple of unwanted knobs into an open source internet radio streamer. Sure, there’s always Pandora for those who aren’t inclined to get their elbows dirty, but seriously, what fun is that? Roll up those sleeves, grab whatever tools your pop gave you when you left for college and hit the read link. Pronto.

[Via Hacked Gadgets]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Networking

DIY WiFi radio built with ASUS WL-520gU router, sweat and tears originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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