The Streema Blog

Every once in a while, we have a “Before and After” moment in Streema’s development – and today, we’ve got one of those. From now on, when playing any station on the Streema.com website, our website’s player will open in a separate window, as it currently does on our popular Facebook application.  We understand that many of you are probably thinking “So what’s the big deal?”, but this is a change that will help us build a better Streema and we’ll explain how in the paragraphs below.

One of the features that we’ve traditionally been very proud of was our embedded player, since it allowed users to navigate Streema without the stream getting cut off.  But this meant that there were tradeoffs to be made in terms of loading time, usability, search engine crawleability, availability of station information, etc.  At this point, it made sense for us to not make those tradeoffs anymore, and while it’s difficult to explain all the pros and cons in a single blog post, here’s a quick summary of how users will benefit:

• A site that is more in line with what’s usually experienced on the web – for example, players usually open in a different window on most media sites and the URL of the page you are visiting usually appears on the browser’s address bar!

• Station stream won’t stop if you happen to click on an ad on our website – this was important because many ad networks will not open up in a separate window.

• Much faster site, in particular for first time users.  Many people will be reeeeally happy about this.

• Better and more complete radio station information at your finger tips, specifically located in our website’s player, and allowing for more interactivity in the future – at least that’s what the plan is!  :)

We know there will be some of you that will miss our embedded player, but we do hope you understand this big change and maybe eventually you will come to enjoy it.  We worked hard in the past with our embedded player (you can read more here and here), but we think it’s time to take Streema to another level, and we believe this will help us build the foundation to get there.

Do note that if anything is not working as you expected, please let us know, as your feedback is really important for us.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

We’re a week away from the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the most popular sports event across the globe.  Starting June 11th, and lasting one month, 32 nations will play in 9 cities around the country of South Africa.  In it’s 19th edition, it will be the first one held in an African nation.

This is an exciting time!  For a whole month,  the entire globe will be talking about this tournament.  It will be present in the news and in talk shows everywhere, and for many people, the World Cup will be present in every conversation!

So, if you’re not one of the lucky few who will get to see it in person, here you can find some of the best soccer stations to listen to the games:

BBC Radio 5 Live (United Kingdom)

talkSport (United Kindom)

Radio Marca (Spain)

RAI Sport (Italy)

RTL L’Equipe (France)

Bayern 3 (Germany)

Radio Bandeirantes (Brazil)

Ok, that’s it – now, nobody has an excuse for not knowing that there are 11 official languages in South Africa or not being able to name the Uruguayan Head Coach!

Good luck to everyone and their team!

Stay tuned,

The Streema Team

Today we are reeeeaaally happy to announce we’ve released the first version of the Streema Widget!!  This has been one of the most requested features, so we hope you really enjoy it!

The widget enables anybody to grab a simple piece of code from our site and bring radio into your blog, website or social profile. In order to play a radio, it calls up a pop-up player (very similar to the one used in our application for Facebook Pages), so that people can continue browsing your site while enjoying a great station chosen by you.

Check out how it works right here in this blog post for Radio Orbital (to grab the code for this station, go here). If you want to select another radio station, just go to our radio directory, go to a station’s profile, and once there, click on “Get this Radio Widget”.

Free Online Radio Stations

Radio Orbital

---

Grab this widget | Other radios

developed by

Although we know this is a basic version, we want to let you know that we’d still love to launch a wider family of widgets, where you’ll be able to customize the color, dimension, and appearance.  Remember, the more feedback you give us about this, the better it will get. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Much has been written and said about Twitter during the past year.  For those who don’t know, Twitter is an information network that enables its users to post messages of up to 140 characters and share “what’s happening right now”.

The service provides real-time information from people all over the world and interestingly enough, it has been used in many situations:  ranging from emergencies, to political campaigns, to even business opportunities.  In many cases, Twitter helps generate reliable information, assistance, and activism – good examples are the way it was used during Haiti’s earthquake and last year’s Iranian elections.

Today, we are talking about it here at Streema because there has been a lot of buzz related to our website on Twitter recently, particularly after the Jonas Brothers appeared on Radio Disney‘s studios – you can check it out here!

While we’re at it, make sure to follow our latest news over there too!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Tomorrow, March 17th, will be St. Patrick’s Day!  Honoring the most recognized patron saint of Ireland, we’ll turn this post green right now. :)

Although St. Patrick’s is an Irish celebration, over time it has become a world wide event since it is also celebrated in countries like Argentina, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the United States, among many others.

To fully enjoy this event, of course, we specially recommend listening to Irish music stations, for example:

• All Irish Radio
• Live Ireland 1
• RTÉ Radio 1

Additionally, check out these tribute stations for Irish bands U2 and The Cranberries:

• Radio U2
• Cranberries Radio

That’s all for now.  If you still don’t have plans for tomorrow, we suggest you head to the nearest Irish pub – everyone’s Irish on March 17th. :D

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Two weeks ago we participated via web conferencing in the second general assembly for RadioDNS, an initiative we’ve written about before.  We’re happy to say this project will soon become a legally formed not-for-profit organization, which will enable it to provide the RadioDNS basis as well as promote the technology to device manufacturers and broadcasters.

RadioDNS is a very important project.  Among other things, it aims to create a standard that will let all of us access a complete content guide for any station, which means more broadcast-related information, more feedback from listeners… eventually providing a radio experience as it should be!  You can learn more in this video.

We want to specially thank Nick Piggott and James Cridland for their work on this great achievement. At Streema, we’re fully committed to give our support to this organization as well as to others who have a vision that is aligned with using technology innovation to improve the radio listening experience.

As the RadioDNS states on its website: “There’s a change happening to your radio. It’s getting more connected to the rest of the world”.  We certainly want to contribute to that change. :)

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

This coming Sunday is St. Valentine’s Day – and we are expecting a big celebration of love. :)

While to some people it may be yet another commercial day – and the truth is most of us probably don’t know who that saint was – we think it’s a great occasion to honor what the White Duke (David Bowie) called it:  the old fashioned word.

And you guessed it, here are the best Love stations and Romantic radios out there, so you can devote them to anyone you love. We specially recommend these three:

• Sky.fm Love Music
• Love Radio 97.5
• M2 Love – Only Love Songs

If you want to go beyond Love and celebrate Peace as well, we suggest these two “Flower Power” radio stations:

• Flower Power Oldies
• Flower Power Radio
  
• Radio WoodStock

Okay, that’s all for now.  Just make sure that on Sunday, whomever you’re with, wherever you are, and whatever you do, you’re celebrating LOVE!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

PS: Thanks to Rochi for recommending the picture we included in this post!

This blog post is not about radio stations, media players, nor music – it’s concerning a more delicate topic since millions of lives were affected.

It’s been over two weeks since the earthquake hit Haiti, one of the poorest countries on the planet, and as we all know, the country has been devastated.

Even though many people have already given support, it’s also true that many haven’t.  For those who haven’t – and for those that want to help again – we thought we would show you some options for helping.  This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good place to start!

Donations:

• American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/

• Clinton Bush Haiti Fund: http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org/

• Doctors Without Borders: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

• Save The Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/

• The International Rescue Committee: http://www.theirc.org/

Screen the movie “The Road to Fondwa” at your school, church, business, etc. and raise funds: http://fondwa.org/screenings/plan-a-haiti-fundraiser-screening/

And last but not least, spread the word! Copy the list above and share it via email, Facebook or Twitter.

Newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and even bloggers may be talking about the Haiti situation less now than a few weeks ago, but there is still a lot of people that are in need – and it’s Never Too Late To Help!  :)

Stay tuned,

The Streema Team

PS: If you know additional ways to help, please do share them with us here.

Hi!  Given that the holiday season is almost here, we wanted to talk about a holiday-related genre that has started to get more relevance on our radio station directory recently: Christmas.

Christmas is a music genre that, independently of the country you live in or the community you belong to, we think is worth checking out because of the peace and happiness that it brings at this time of the year. :)

According to our own radio popularity rankings, these are the top Christmas Radio Stations on Streema:

• Happy Christmas Radio
• Christmas Music 24/7
• Planet Christmas

Feel free to enjoy these and other radio stations this holiday season!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

Early last week we posted that we were working on a Song Information Aggregator.  Well, we got so excited that we decided to work on it a whole lot more and… we’re proud to announce that our initial DEMO of the feature is now available on both our website and Facebook applications!!

We wanted to give our blog readers a sneak preview of this feature, which is now live, but will not be widely promoted yet.  So, when you are listening to a radio station that displays the name of the song on our player’s screen, just click on the name of the song and we’ll take you to the DEMO.  To quickly try it out, here are a few stations that have easily accessible* song information:

- Power Hitz: Top 40 – Hip Hop – Rap

- 181.FM Rock 40: Rock – Adult Contemporary

- ETN.fm Progressive Channel ETN2: Electronica – House

In addition, once you’re on the Song Information Aggregator page, you can search for any other “Artist – Song” by using the search box on that page. For a quick example, click on any of the following songs:

- Lady Gaga – Just Dance

- Metro Station – Shake It

- AC/DC – Back In Black

And for those of you that are interested in the tech stuff, the development consisted of integrating YouTube, Twitter, and LyricWiki APIs.

We really think we can improve this much more, so please send us all the comments you may have about it. Bear in mind this is only a DEMO, so you might find some (or many) things that don’t work as expected. Hope you enjoy it, and as we’ve said, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team

* Not all the radio stations in our directory may have this feature working – for more information, please, check our FAQ #4 .