Local firms CodeMorphic, Nabbit jazz radio
Two updates to my earlier post on music-streaming and music-tagging services:
CodeMorphic's Minnesota Public Radio streaming-audio app for iPhone and iPod Touch is out, and it's exactly what I hoped it would be.
Elegantly designed and dead-simple to use, it has but three buttons: "news," "classical" and "the "Current" (the latter for MPR's popular-music station).
I clicked the service I wanted, hit "play" and, after a brief pause, was MPR-ified. The sound seemed to be perfectly acceptable if not audiophile-grade over Wi-Fi connections, though I'm not the best judge of such things. It also works via 3G on an iPhone.
The iPod nano has always been my favorite iPod, but getting Internet-streaming access to my beloved public radio suddenly makes the Touch much more attractive. I don't like using Apple's clunky external FM tuner; the CodeMorphic way appeals to the minimalist in me.
Minnesota-based Nabbit, meanwhile, has unveiled several improvements to its radio-tagging service.
The idea with Nabbit is to click buttons on your cell phone when you hear songs you like, which "nabs" or tags the song for future reference.
You do this with either the phone's physical buttons, which you premap to your favorite stations, or with virtual buttons in a mobile browser (such as the one on an iPhone or iPod Touch).
Now, though, Nabbit is rolling out more ways to tag songs for subsequent identification and purchase. You can do it via text message, or using voice commands via the Jott service.
In another big plus, Nabbit has broadened its reach beyond stations the Twin Cities and San Francisco to about 3,000 of them nationwide.
I reviewed Nabbit a while ago, and will be revisiting it again next week to see how its latest bells and whistles work for me.
Update: Two down sides to CodeMorphic's MPR-streaming app, one obvious and one not to obvious:
You are obviously out of luck when not within access to Wi-Fi or 3G (it won't work with EDGE).
Also, it does not play in the background when doing other stuff on your device, such as reading e-mail. When you switch to another app, the audio cuts off.
