SAN FRANCISCO – Call it TiVo for the radio.
A new $70 device called RadioShark lets you record your favorite AM and FM radio shows to your home computer and enjoy them later either from the desktop or a portable device.
Aside from the appealing shark-fin shape of RadioShark, the real beauty in this product from Griffin Technology is its operational simplicity.
I can’t remember the last time I installed the software, plugged in the gadget and intuitively learned nearly all the controls in less than five minutes.
That’s precisely what I did that with RadioShark, a gem that I’d be happy to find a permanent home for on my desktop.
Inside that shiny white shark fin, there’s an AM/FM radio. You connect the device to your PC using a USB connection, from which the RadioShark also gets its power. There are no buttons or dials or station-setting on the unit itself – that’s all accessed via software (for PC or Mac).
After installing the RadioShark application, I plugged in the unit and launched the program. Up on my screen popped a small gray square that clearly listed station-tuning, volume controls and time-shifting tools.
To tune the RadioShark to a desired station, I simply dragged a sliding notch near the frequency numbers at the top of the display. Within seconds I was listening to the San Francisco Bay area’s KNBR sports talk radio station from my computer speakers.
When I clicked “record,” three backlit blue “gills” on the RadioShark unit began to glow red, an indication I had begun capturing the broadcast to a WMA file. It will also record to WAV files if you choose, and Apple users have the option of capturing the audio files to the AAC audio file format.
Only one station at a time can be recorded, by the way.
IPod users will appreciate that RadioShark can create a folder in the iTunes application. The next time they synchronize to the desktop, they’ll have their RadioShark recording for the road.
The time-shifting panel can be toggled from the main screen and, similar to TiVo for television, RadioShark records a rolling timeframe of audio. You can specify the length of that timeframe (30, 60, or 90 minutes, etc.) and you’re only limited by the size of your hard drive.
Thirty minutes should suffice for most casual radio listening and the most recent half-hour will always be accessible. That 30 minutes of time-shifting requires 327 megabytes of available hard drive space.
Like the song you just heard on an FM station? Rewind it and listen to it again with RadioShark.
Be careful with the time-shifting, though. When I exited the RadioShark program, that temporary audio file was automatically deleted for good. When I wanted to record something to keep, I just clicked the instant-record button. RadioShark created a permanent file and stored it in the folder of my choice.
The software did have some minor drawbacks. The “seek” station button worked in both AM and FM modes, but for some reason, only the FM frequency mode showed me the new station I’d just discovered. In AM mode, RadioShark found additional stations and played them fine, but it still displayed the old station frequency I’d left seconds earlier.
If you’re a fan of late-night radio talk shows, or odd-hours disc jockey music programs that air while you’re at work or asleep, RadioShark may be the answer for you.
I’m a fan of talk show host Art Bell, who does his best to unravel various alien agendas in the wee hours of the night. With RadioShark, the vast interplanetary conspiracies are waiting for me in the morning, thanks to this useful new device.
If I’m abducted now, it won’t be from lack of sleep.
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