After publishing a post about the new 1 Radio News app, developer Steven Clift commented:
Thanks for the mention!
I had a private email in my draft box for Tom … here, I’ll share with all:
Thomas, Ken Reitz suggested you would be a good person to reach out to about my app.
In the days before the Internet, I can remember taking my shortwave radio up to my Grandparents in far northern Minnesota. I’d have the time to be “closer to the world” by listening global broadcasters like the BBC World Service and be intrigued by Cold War broadcasts from the Soviet Union and Cuba giving a decidedly different view.
As my Uncle gave me my first shortwave radio, what might one give to a teen today to easily expose them to the world of truly global news. Now there is an app for that: http://1radionews.com 🙂
In 1993, when I first went online, my novice thought was this might be like “reception clear shortwave.” Going to the world.
I had forgotten that early thought until a few days ago when I added 30+ live English news streams from broadcasters around the world into the pro version of my 1RadioNews.com Android radio app.
I started channel surfing … what’s on here, fun, OK how about this station. What are Radio Sputnik and Radio China International up to … oh and Wisconsin Public Radio has some great original programming. So now I can go even deeper in my explorations of the voices around the world. I could discover radio, discover the world again through the power of sound and the human voice right on my mobile – quickly and easily.
FYI – “Pro” version has 3 times more – curated and well tested – streams, but the free ad-supported version has some classics like the BBC World Service. I tied to make the app “thumbable” meaning you can just hold the phone and swipe and press a button to play. Super simple and a lot quicker than apps with literally ten of thousands of stations. Saving ten seconds to switch the station matters!”
Many thanks for the insight, Steven! Since most of us SWLs are international “news junkies,” we appreciate having a curated, simple interface to hear top of the hour news from our favorite broadcasters.
By the way, Steven, I have added 1 Radio News to our list of the best apps for Shortwave and Ham radio enthusiasts–one of our most popular all-time posts. Good luck and we look forward to hearing about any future developments!
Thanks KU.
I was able to add KBS via a mobile .m3u stream and add it to both versions of the app.
Also, 1 Radio News is essentially a skin built on top of open source ffmpeg code for Android adapted by the guy who released ServeStream. Check out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.sourceforge.servestream&hl=en
https://github.com/wseemann/FFmpegMediaPlayer
Thanks,
Steve
Say speaking of some stations being locked in Flash-only players on the web.
I would love to add Channel Africa from South Africa and KBS from Korea.
If anyone knows staff there who I should contact about getting a stream out there that we can promote via the 1 Radio News app, have them contact me: http://stevenclift.com/contact
FYI – Kenya Broadcasting has an English service stream, but it needs some major fine-tuning. If anyone has a contact there, bring them in loop.
Thanks,
Steven Clift
The stream addresses can often be found by inspecting the player source code. For example in the Chromium browser, pressing ctrl-U shows the source of the open web page, e.g. a radio player. However, sometimes the address may be hidden within the Flash file (.swf). In this case the solution is to download the .swf file and use a special tool (see http://www.swftools.org/) to view its contents.
The KBS stream address:
rtmp://live.world.kbs.gscdn.com/sec_cocotv/_definst_/CH00003?id=2111&si=3&secure=877971236f539da85e03d883baf7676582e218dc218d1f07eec564f084267d1e9fe7ffca22edbb4ded0bac4a9259afd5681236416db9b6a84a139a6147d269555308193bbf5eef7d37d8469399a09d182ff22b8584f339ca70658f1e1b9fd4a4d35e186b166c8f55fc970322953a2330&csu=true
Channel Africa (found via PublicRadioFan):
rtmp://216.246.37.52/channelafrica247/channelafrica247.stream
(No English at the moment I tested this stream)
I would appreciate if your app were open source. I tend to prefer open source software where possible.
Thanks Thomas and DL4NO,
We are just about to reach 1,000 active installs thanks in part to the warm welcome from the shortwave listening community!
One thing I need help with is making sure I didn’t miss public or international English broadcasters NOT using Flash-only players.
PublicRadioFan.com is an awesome resource and I also created a custom search via Google of radio streaming directory sites to help me suss out the lowest bandwidth most open streams: http://bit.ly/searchradio
On the app privileges, I’ll check with my developer on more details, but the app needs to know if you are on the phone or not or it will keep playing. In simplifying the permission description some uses appear lumped together in the warnings. The storage permissions are needed to download the on-demand MP3 news headlines.
But I agree “read phone status and identity” sounds invasive … looking here – https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/6014972?hl=en – it appears to be the identity of the phone not the person.
The 1 Radio News apps ask for 4 permissions and TuneIn for example asks for 8 and other than Kids Radio with 3, all the other radio apps on my phone are 5-10 permissions.
Also, 1 Radio News does not have registration or login, no Facebook connections, or email required, etc.
Thanks!
Steve
Hello Steven,
we Germans might appear to be a bit paranoid to you about our data. But we had a few quite “difficult” political systems in our immediate past. Considering that we had destructions like 9/11 times 100.000 over here only 70 years ago and a total control system in one third of Germany until 25 years ago you should concede this to us.
“Mute the audio stream when a call comes in” is a valid function. Explain why you need certain privileges and I have no problem with it.
73,
Alexander
The app is very interesting. But it requests more privileges than I am willing to provide.