My Naija News - Slacker Media Introduces Portable Internet Radio

You are here:Home

Technology

Mobile & GSM

Slacker Media Introduces Portable Internet Radio

Written by Dike Edward

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Slacker portable Internet Radio

I don't want to sound bush (which I'm definitely not) but this is actually my first time of hearing of, or seeing an internet radio gadget. From the stable of Slacker Media, an American company, comes the Slacker portable, an internet radio/hand held media player.

Much different from our regular iPods, mp3 and mp4 players, the Slacker portable seems to be the future in hand-held media playing devices. I am sure you would be eager to know just what the Slacker is all about. This is a gadget that enables not only listening to your favourite tracks on radio but introduces you to similar new artistes and gives you artistes' biographies. The Slacker portable uses wi-fi or an ordinary USB connection to a PC to download songs on customized channels created by you online and refreshes them with new music every time the player accesses the Internet.

However, it works or loads wirelessly so you do not need a Wi-Fi to listen to your gbedu. The controls on the "SP", as it is called by its maker, are on the right panel of the device. They include a home button, a scroll wheel/enter button, stop, forward, play/pause and a power/hold button. On the left hand side is a heart shaped favourites button and a ban button for tunes you don't like (the ban button when presed ensures that you never hear them again).

The superb, and everyone's favourite, feature on the Slacker is the ability to view artiste profiles and biographies while listening to music. This is only possible if the screen is kept in artiste mode, which is done by pressing the scroll wheel or tapping next to the album cover on the strip in the "now playing" screen. Artiste bio change as the the song changes, in otherwords you are being kept up to date on your favourite artistes.

The SP has a 4 inch 480 by 272 pixel LCD (massive if you would ask me). With this wonderful feature, one wonders why it doesn't play videos or displays photos. Seems like a complete waste of space because it's definitely too large for a personal media player. However the artiste bio option puts the screen to good use.

The player comes in three flash memory capacities 2GB, 4GB and 8GB, each storing as much as 15, 25 and 40 personalized stations respectively leaving only about 500MB, 1.5GB or 4GB for your personal files which would be mp3 and WMA files. One other area where the Slacker seems to be slacking is in audio codec supports. Clearly it was designed primarily for listening to just Slacker files, which are AAC pro V2. This simply means that you don't get the same feeling you get when listening to Slacker files on mp3 or wma files.

It's manufacturers claim the device has a battery life of 10hrs which is impressive. I am not sure if this is already available in Naija, but one sure fact is that, it would appeal to nearly, if not all music lovers .Who wouldn't want to have their favourtite Naija jams as well as bios of their artistes in one device? I would. Would you?

Quote this article on your site | Views: 258 | Print | E-mail

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to Refresh your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Title:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments