A mention of Future Perfect Radio made the new issue of Wired magazine.  Future Perfect Radio is newish web radio featuring over 25 channels of independent music — everything from singer/songwriters to far out experimental and noise rock.  And stations dedicated to upcoming music festivals add a particular uniqueness.

The past couple of days I’ve been listening to my fair share of mainly three of four of its channels.  The programming is pretty damn good which is the most important factor.

Where Future Perfect Radio gets it wrong is in deployment and distribution — basically how you can listen.  As far as I know, you must visit the site and launch a pop-up player.  The ability to block an artist on the site’s player is a plus, but why no iTunes integration?  Why no option to embed?  I want to be able to listen in a variety of ways.  Allowing multiple listening methods would only expand Future Perfect Radio’s span, scope and listenership.

Not to totally knock satellite radio, but from what I’ve experienced so far, it is just not worth it.

I recently signed up for a free XM trial online.  Limited to roughly 80 channels, the trial lasts only a few days and takes place entirely online where it seems all the bugs lie unsquashed.  Navigating from channel to channel is simple enough, just scroll and click the desired station.  But the biggest drawback lies in the total lack of traditional control buttons.  Kiss the forward-a-channel and back-a-channel buttons good bye.  Volume controls?  What are those?  To top it off, you hear lo-fi streaming by default and must seek out the hi-fi option.

After deciding upon a channel and clicking, it took at least nine seconds to hear anything.  Luckily, it only takes two or three seconds to show what is playing (either a song title or who’s talking), but still an eternity when finding something worthwhile.

Enter the commercials.  Since satellite radio charges a subscription fee, why are there any ads?  Although commercial free stations abound I guess this is like cable TV where ads are simply accepted.

There are a few other minor gripes.  I experienced buffering.  Although other internet content loaded perfectly, XM occasionally stalled.

XM programing is mediocre.  Besides the few interesting speciality programs, there is no killer content to seal the deal.  I like the Outlaw Country channel and XMU, the indie station, but they’re nothing a few hundred online terestrial and internet stations couldn’t replace.

Unless you live in the country where internet service is poor, drive extremly long distances, or must listen to your sporting events, an iPod hook up and a fully loaded iPod would probably serve you better.  Too many free options exsist to piss money away on piss poor programming.  Thousands upon thousands of free stations and podcasts are availible free online.  Amazing apps like Pandora and Fstream exsist for your computer and for the iPhone.  So give them a shot if you haven’t already.

In the coming days I’ll post on some of my favorite podcasts and online radio stations.  So stay tuned (to the internet.)

So I’m trying to test this new site that was passed along to me: DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com and am experiencing trouble finding sites that could be potentially “down”.  (Internet, you are just too perfect today.)  But finally found one with one of my favorite radio stations, WFMU.  When I tried streaming their online radio stream in iTunes, nothing happened.  So that led me to the mothership site, WFMU.org and that didn’t work either.

Perfect time to try this new “down for everyone or just me” site right?  Well, kind of.  I typed it in and got the following read out: “Huh? doesn’t look like a site on the interwho.”  A message that is most certainly incorrect.  It has exsisted for years.  So what could this be?

The Sound of Young America, a show that bills itself as “A Public Radio Show About Things That Are Awesome,” has an interview with Benjamin Nugent author of American Nerd: The Story of My People.

I just listened to the interview (streamable below).  The book covers Nerds from many angles including both sociological and historical.  It is also partially a memoir.