Working at home, I find myself looking for ways to keep track of the outside world without turning on the TV. Finding a good source for audio information and music has been a challenge. But after my.Yahoo's recent redesign, I added the NPR "Most e-mailed" module to my my.Yahoo screen. Then I started to listen to the stories occasionally. Then I became fascinated by the client that NPR built to deliver audio files.
The NPR Media Player a great example of what the IT world calls Web 2.o. I'm not sure exactly how its programmed, but I'm guessing it uses a programming style called AJAX (Asynchronous Java And XML). It's similar to the way Google Maps is programmed. To start, go to http://www.npr.org and click "Listen" when you find a story you find interesting.
What's special about the way NPR's player works is that once you are listening to one story, you can surf the NPR site and continue to add content to the client by clicking the "plus" icon. You can add as many stories as you want and then go back to your e-mail or spreadsheets while the NPR player plays the radio show you just programmed.
There's so much content on the NPR site, you'll never run out of things to listen to, but here are a few things to look for:
A 1 hour profile on Frank Sinatra.
A Terri Gross interview with Sharon Jones and Dap Kings founder Bosco ‘Bass’ Mann.
A profile on Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was literally wiped off the map by tornadoes earlier this year. They are staging a comeback by embracing all things green.
Wow, it didn't take me long to get back to a green story, did it?
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