The Streema Blog

Over the past year we’ve noticed a very important increase in mobile browser users, specifically on the Android platform.  We thought, how could we cater to these users?  While obviously an Android app would probably do the trick, the truth is that given how mobile has evolved – and is evolving – then it might be simpler for us and for users to be able to interact with a mobile-friendly version of our site.

So, we started experimenting.

One interesting fact is that many of our mobile users tune in via the radio station profiles, so we decided to start there and adapt these pages for the Android browser.  Additionally, we included a mobile search box as well as a list of “Featured Radios”, since not all the stations can be played through the Android browser.  Unfortunately, only stations with MP3 stream can be played for now, but we’re hoping that will change in the future.

As for the technical details, if you’re interested, the whole front-end was developed using JQuery Mobile. This is a powerful framework that will make it easy to export the User Interface to other platforms such as iOS, Blackberry, Nokia… you can see the complete list here.

Hope you enjoy our first very small step in mobile and do expect new announcements soon!

We have great news to share with you: we finally launched Radio Spots on Streema.com!! What you will read about below is a really important step in the development of a better community experience at our site. Hope you enjoy it!

Each radio station will have their own individual Radio Spot. These pages will not only display additional information about a station but also the following: a You May Also Like section, for potentially interesting and related radio stations; a Wall to write your thoughts or comments about the radio station (for this you need to register / log in); and a Now Listening box to show the users within the Streema community who are enjoying that same radio (check out the mockup below). By the way, if you’re thinking that we should also allow users to “review” a radio and give it a “rating”, you’re spot on: that’s in the works and soon to be released. : )

How do you get to a Radio Spot? Just click on the name of the radio in our Radio Directory, the Charts, or any other place where the name appears. The only exception happens if you’re trying to get to a Radio Spot from your Favorites list – from there, you’ll need to place the mouse pointer on the name of the radio, wait for a second, and then click on the text that says “Radio Spot”.

By the way, here are the spots of four Streema Team favorite stations:

• Virgin Radio Classic Rock
• 977 The Mix
• Radio Swiss Jazz
• Ministry of Sound

So, what do you think? How could we improve these Radio Spots? Send us your feedback and thoughts to info at streema dot com or just leave your comment below. We want to hear from you!! : )

Ok, that’s all for now. Come back to our blog soon, as we’ll be posting recent Radio News.

Stay tuned!

The Streema Team