This Week's Sponsor:

Kolide

Ensure that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta.


Posts in iPhone

Radium for iOS: Internet Radio and Sirius XM in Your Pocket

Perhaps uniquely to me, radio is a social gathering, since the radio and not the television is the thing my family and I always convene around instead of the television. We’ll listen to terrible singles and complain through them, and we’ll joke about how every artist feels like they have to fill in dead air by shouting a repetitive string of “yeahs” or “oohs” or other provocative exclamations. Then the next night there’ll be a string of great songs, and maybe it’ll get a little quieter at the table as we listen in.

As a consequence I’m used to radio becoming the thing I have on in the background. You get to know all the songs, the loops they run on, the voices of the DJs and reporters, and it just becomes this sort of comforting noise machine. Why go to Starbucks and soak in the ambient noise[1] when you can turn on the radio?

Sometime in college, I happened across Radium, and I had this instantaneous attraction to it. Imagine my excitement when I discovered I could actually bring that comforting noise machine to my desktop! At the time it didn’t play what was locally airing over FM, but it did bring Internet radio to the desktop through a simple search bar and drop down menu. What made it stick for me was that instead of browsing by station, Radium let you browse by what you were into. It surfaced relevant stations that fit any number of queries from “90’s acoustic” or “covers.” And you’d actually find stations that fit those descriptions.

By the time I got an iPhone, I figured Radium would have made it onto iOS with a big shiny yellow icon, matching the style that pervaded it on the desktop. Not yet.

That was a couple years ago. Today, Radium has arrived on iOS, not with the classic radio I imagined it would be identified by, but by a chocolate drop that’s become Radium’s unusual characteristic since the launch of their updated Mac app earlier this year.

One might wonder how a menu bar app dependent on search would translate to the iPhone, yet CatPig Studios have pulled it off, drawing your attention to all the right places and making what should feel like a sparse list of radio stations feel like a traditional music player, alive and full of personality. It becomes immediately obvious that you should play something, with instructions limited to a lack of artwork and example queries that flash in the search bar. As you begin to search, cover art falls away, and the app searches and updates stations in realtime as you enter your query.

What you can listen to is virtually unlimited as far as Internet radio goes. Radium claims to support over 8,000 stations, which includes NPR and BBC radio. It supports ClearChannel stations, meaning that I can conveniently listen to a local radio stream without having to go through a Flash player on the web or download the iHeartRadio[2] app. If you’re a Sirius XM listener, you can plug in your account info and stream satellite radio straight to your iPhone over an Internet connection. The app also supports other providers such as CalmRadio for classical music and Digitally Imported for electronic music. It’s absolutely convenient and a hallmark of what made Radium such a great app on the Mac.

All of the great features that are found in the Mac app can also be found in the iOS app. Tapping on album artwork, provided there’s song data, lets you add the song to a wish list or view it on iTunes to purchase. There’s also a sharing button for copying track data or the station link so others can listen-in. And if you have a Last.fm account, you can plug in your account so you can scrobble and love tracks as you play them. The equalizer is also present, automatically choosing a preset based on what’s currently playing, which you can turn on or off by pressing the inconspicuous power button. Each station is accompanied by a glyph describing what kind of music it plays, and you can change that by tapping on the icon in your list.

Swiping on stations lets you love it so you can quickly find it later. If iCloud sync is turned on, those stations are also shared with Radium on the Mac so you can quickly tune-in from your desktop later.

The big difference between the iOS and Mac apps is that the iOS app is even more delicious.

There’s something gratifying about tugging at the artwork, pulling it down towards the bottom of the display and watching it snap back into place. On cue, the pause button quietly reappears with artist and track info, unwilling to wait for the animation to complete its preprogrammed bounces. Then you’ll flick the other direction and watch the artwork similarly bounce into place above the station listing, the pause button becoming the deciding anchor for the height of the now playing information at the top of the display. It’s possibly rubber band scrolling at its finest and it’s a detail only an app on the iPhone could pull off.

With iOS 7 on the horizon, one might wonder whether Radium is relevant given iTunes Radio, and the possible but unconfirmed inclusion of traditional Internet radio stations currently found in iTunes’ directory. My gut feeling says that Radium and iTunes aren’t competing on the same turf, with Radium’s obvious advantage being the Sirius XM and the ability to play back radio stations traditionally locked to particular content providers or apps. CatPig Studios are in the business of letting you tune-in to the rest of the world, while iTunes and others are in the business of generating personalized playlists labeled as radio.

Radium has been one of the apps I’ve always thought would be a good fit for the iPhone, and it’s finally here. It’s the same Radium you know and love, adapted to iOS and imbued with charming details that make themselves evident as you scroll, flick, and swipe across the interface. It’s Internet radio in your pocket, and it’s impressively inexpensive, regularly costing only $3.99 on the App Store. Until September 3rd, however, you can pick up the app for only $1.99 as part of an introductory promotion.


  1. I don’t have to share a table and I’ve got my own outlet! Two even! ↩︎
  2. There’s nothing wrong with the iHeartRadio app, but I just don’t want to be asked to sign in with a Facebook account every time I want to listen to live radio. ↩︎






A Quick Rundown of Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone

I can’t say I’m terribly excited about what Microsoft is offering in Office Mobile, but it’s a start. Now available on the iPhone, Office Mobile requires an Office 365 subscription, which will give you access to all of Microsoft’s Office apps on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, and 60 minutes of Skype calls for $9.99 per month or $99.99 a year for Home Premium.

Why you’d want it

Lots of iPhone apps can view Office files, but few render them properly. Office Mobile, with Microsoft’s layout engine, should at least be able to display your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations as they were intended. It also gives you a chance to make small edits on the go, but I wouldn’t use it to write a novel.

Some of the cool stuff to be found are features like Resume Reading, which automatically opens Word documents at the place you last left off on your PC. You can also flip through mini PowerPoint slideshows to practice your talking points before a big presentation.

But I wouldn’t bother

It’s basically the equivalent of Google Drive for the iPhone, which is to say it isn’t very good.

Office Mobile will aggregate Office files from your SkyDrive folder, which is nice, but the editing options offered are finicky. Microsoft prefers their own controls before iOS’ own standard actions, making editing a frustrating experience. Doing basic things like select text in Word or tapping on cells in Excel is a chore, and editing itself is complicated.

If you have an Office 365 subscription, it’s something extra that will give you the option to review files, leave comments, and fix typos when you’re away from your Mac or PC, but I don’t see this being a great incentive for jumping into the latest office apps if you’re content with iWork or an older Office suite.

Office Mobile is free to download from the App Store.



Google Chrome for iOS Updates With Improved Voice Search

Pending an official announcement from Google, Google Chrome for iOS now contains the previously announced voice improvements that lets you search the web without typing out a single letter. Covering the extra row of keys that used to present themselves as you typed, a floating bar replaces the previous voice button from the omnibox. Tapping it brings up a microphone where you can speak your query, and depending on the question, Google will read the answer back to you (for example, ask it what time it is in Italy). Just like Google Search, Chrome will read back the text to you as you speak, and the results feel nearly instant.

You can download Chrome for iOS from the App Store.