(with pictures: www.bbc.co.uk/radio www.radionowhere.org www.huddlechat.com www.biographicon.com indexed.blogspot.com www.shaunthesheep.com/games/colourchain www.zimbabwesituation.com oldphotosjapan.com/en/ ) THE INTERNET COLUMN By Giles Turnbull Radio is dead. Long live radio. It's time to fondly remember our friend radio, who kept millions entertained for much of the 20th century. But his time has passed, and he is now replaced by something else, something more digital. It's still called radio, but it's not the same beast at all. The old AM and FM sets we listened to when we were kids still work, but they are fast being phased out and replaced by DAB sets. But even DAB is under threat. A neat technology it may be (although the audiophile purists dispute that), but it too is rapidly having to make way for online radio broadcasts. The BBC's Listen Again service (www.bbc.co.uk/radio) is the best example of that. Pretty much any computer with a web browser can access the last seven days of BBC radio output and listen to it at a time that suits the listener. It's very popular, and rightly so. But it's by no means the only online radio service around. There are zillions of independent radio stations broadcasting on the web and by means of podcasts. Their costs are low, even compared to the low-cost tradition of radio, and thanks to the internet they can reach huge audiences. Take Radio Nowhere (www.radionowhere.org). This tiny non-profit outfit produces weekly radio shows full of humour, personality and good music. You can listen to them online in your web browser, or subscribe to the podcast to download and listen to them when it suits you. The flagship Christopher Laird show (broadcast on Mondays at 9pm) sounds as professional as anything you'd expect from the BBC, and is consistently entertaining. Alternatively, you might enjoy delving into Last.fm, one of the UK's best web business success stories. The site lets you keep a record of the music you've been listening to, and also listen to other people's playlists for free. You can even type in the name of an artist or band to listen to a free custom radio station of similar-sounding songs. Podcasts are a popular way of listening to radio now. A podcast is an audio or video service that you subscribe to using special software (Apple's iTunes for Mac and Windows is a good choice). Subscribing is a bit like telling your digital TV recorder to record all the episodes of your favourite show in advance. Your podcast client will download a copy of each show you subscribe to, every time it's updated. Then you can listen to the show on your computer, or copy it to your MP3 player to listen to while you're out and about. Podcasts are great for commuters, workers and music junkies. And of course there are zillions of them too - browse through the Podcasts list in the iTunes Music Store to get started. + Getting in a Huddle + Google announced a new web chat service last week. HuddleChat (www.huddlechat.com) was designed to help people work together on projects. It had been up for only a day before bloggers started complaining that it ripped off a similar service called Campfire (www.campfirenow.com); so HuddleChat was promptly taken offline. Still, it did the job of advertising Google's new App Engine system for building web-based software. + Become a biography + The Biographicon (www.biographicon.com) is a web site for biographies of anyone and everyone. Unlike Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com), which insists that featured people must reach a certain level of fame before they can be included, the Biographicon isn't fussy. Anyone can write a bio about anyone else - or about themselves. The site is based on wiki software, which means anyone can edit it. Go on, add yourselves! + Browsing around + :: Indexed: humour in graphs and charts indexed.blogspot.com :: Play Colour Chain at Shaun the Sheep's web site www.shaunthesheep.com/games/colourchain :: Zimbabwe Situation knows what's going on in Zimbabwe www.zimbabwesituation.com :: Old photos of Japan oldphotosjapan.com/en/ Giles Turnbull has a web site at gilest.org ENDS