New In The App Store – Public Radio Tuner

By
On December 1, 2008

I’ve been on a bit of Internet radio streak for the past few days. While I continue to be huge fan of Pandora and last.fm I’m also finding that those applications which provide direct access to web-based radio streams can be quite useful. Last week I took a look at a couple…
this week I’ll be taking a look at a few more.

Today’s entry is a brand new free app Public Radio Tuner. Public Radio Tuner is about as simple and Internet radio application as you’re going to find.

When you first launch it delivers a list of various public radio stations that can be accessed via the web. You scroll down the list (it’s a very long list and there is no search feature), find the station you like, tap it and it launches the station. That’s the whole application.

There really aren’t any controls to speak of other than a button to stop and start the stream and a volume scroll. That’s it. There isn’t even a way to select a station as a favorite. Seriously, you can’t mark a station as a favorite and there is no search function. Not the most convenient app I have seen.

Not only that, but as soon as the iPhone turns off the screen to save power the stream stops.

Overall, it’s a good example of a free app that does one thing and is kind of useful. As someone who enjoys listening to public radio, however, I really hope that in a future update this application gets some of the basic things it should have had at launch.

You canget it HERE in the App Store.