Streaming simplicity

For the past few years, I've been fond of listening to streaming radio stations while I work on the computer. When I first got broadband around 2004, I discovered the radio tab in iTunes and was instantly hooked. My enduring favorites include:

• Haveyouherd radio--If you're into bands like Donna the Buffalo and Railroad Earth, this is your slice of Internet heaven.
• Reallymusic Radio--I'd swear someone's rifling through my record collection and playing them online when I'm not looking.
• WNCW FM--Probably the most original public radio station in North Carolina. Curiously, their stream consistently goes silent on Fridays from 12:00 noon 'til 1:00 p.m. when they play "Frank on Fridays," an hourlong weekly exploration of the music of Frank Zappa.

My usual method for connecting to Internet radio is to open iTunes and choose my preferred station from playlists menu. It takes a minute or two to get the stream going, but then I can usually minimize iTunes and get back to work. The only problem is that if I'm doing anything that's too processor intensive, I have to shut down iTunes to free up some resources. When that happens, I just get my iPod out and plug it into an extra pair of computer speakers.

Last night, I found a better way to listen to Internet radio streams, if only on my laptop, which runs Fedora Linux. My new best friend for streaming is a little application called Radio Tray, which puts a little icon on the system tray and allows one to select a stream to listen to. Its simplicity is sheer elegance. The interface is nothing but a drop down menu from which I can choose a stream. The best part is I can get to any of my favorite Internet radio stations with a single mouse click and have tunes streaming from my speakers in a matter of seconds.

Right-clicking the icon brings up a preferences menu from which one can add more stations or set a sleep timer so you can listen to your favorite stream while you drift off. This truly is a case where less is more. I just wish they would come up with a version for Mac OS X.