Friday, Oct. 3, 2008 -- 4:09 p.m. -- out and about

Introducing WunderRadio from Weather Underground -- yep, that Weather Underground. The weather folks.

The company known for what's likely the best iPhone-optimized weather site has its second App Store app -- this one called WunderRadio.

And it's Wunderbar.

Like Tuner and AOL Radio, it streams am and fm radio. But it's so much more. It streams EVERY station on the planet, or so it seems. I'm talking about every station I've ever listened to. It has stations I've picked up while listening at night as a kid. It picks up the stations I listened to commuting in New York and New Jersey and in Pittsburgh. It even has the station I used to listen to to find out whether or not my school would be closed due to snow.

How much would you pay for all of this? Don't answer. Because there's more.

What's a weather company know about radio? Well, it's got NOAA weather radio from just about everywhere and when you have the weather radio on, it shows the wunderground site and radar for that area.

You get all the radio stations plus weather radio plus radar. Now how much would you pay?

Well don't answer because there's still more!

Call now and we'll throw in scanner frequencies for free! That's right ... now, hear what your local fire department or police department is doing.

That's right. You get it all. A zillion radio stations, weather radio, radar, police scanners - the works. So how much? You might pay $185 for all that. But you won't. You won't pay $145. You won't pay $100. You won't even pay $50.

If you take advantage of the App Store now, you'll pay just $5.99. That's right ... only $5.99.

There are even different versions of some stations so it will tell you if it's optimized for EDGE or 3G. And it uses your location to either let you search by genre, location or use the built-in GPS to find the stations closest to you.

And I'm talking radio everywhere. Select the U.S. and you get choices from all 50 states broken down by state so searching is easy. Select Canada and get every province. Select a province and get a huge list of cities. There's Virgin Radio in the UK (Sorry, Absolute Radio - ugh) and just about every other station you can think of. I have never seen a collection of stations this massive on the Internet in any one place.

I use AOL Radio and Tuner and I love them. But they are now moved to the last page and WunderRadio is at the top. It's that good, my friends. And you know me. You know I tell you like it is. And I'm telling you, I love this app.

I've seen two small quirks.

1. Sometimes, when I pause the station so it's not playing, it buffers and plays on its own. Minor and happens only sometimes.

2. There are some links that don't work - however, 9 of 10 did for me and considering there are stations from all over the globe and we're talking about Internet streams, that's to be expected. But again, no points deducted. And, the developers ask you to e-mail them with dead links because they acknowledge there's probably some. Very nice and shows dedication to customers.

I wrote to the developers to let them know how much I liked the app and they say that 1.1 is already in the works and should be even better. I can't imagine it being much better. Only thing missing, honestly, is iTunes tagging to allow me to buy a song later in iTunes.

In the age of Pandora and last fm and iTunes, terrestrial radio has taken a back seat. But for me, as someone who has always enjoyed the thrill of the hunt - picking up a distant AM station at night -- this brings me back to my childhood. And it brings me to places I can't be -- like to my favorite afternoon drive DJ in Pittsburgh.

And ... I almost forgot ... the stations that use RDS (Radio Data) will show what's playing and who's on the air when you search for the station.

Check out this app. You'll be glad you did.

Let me know what you think if you decide to try it out.

Thanks for calling.

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Love this software!!!

Totally cool!

SCOTT'S REPLY: I literally can't put down my iPhone. Think of what it must take for me to say that! ;-)

I love your app reviews! tell us more about your stations as a kid and an early commuter. I like stuff like that.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Thank you. Actually, at my old paper in Pittsburgh about 13 years ago, I wrote a column on this. Wish I could find it on the Internets.

I was the guy with my radio at night trying to pick up those stations that always came in when the skies were clear. I lived in New Jersey and remember the first time I picked up a station from Hamilton, Ontario in Canada. I remember it was CHML and it wasn't that great of a station, but it was from Canada!!

After that it was just a thing I did. And to this day, David, I know soooo many call letters and stations from everywhere. Mostly east and south because you couldn't get west coast stations east of the Rockies. And there was some reason it was hard to get anything south of Atlanta (WSB 750) but I can't remember.

I know CFRB 1010 in Toronto and 680 News also in Toronto -- both on WunderRadio.

I know WHAM from Louisville and WLW from Cincinnati. And of course KDKA in Pittsburgh which became my local station but I was listening to it for years long before I was ever in Pittsburgh.

And when I moved to Pittsburgh, I was always listening to the New York stations from back home when I was in the car at night on my 45-mile commute.

Just one of those things I loved to do. And now, I can do it via the iPhone and get FM stations, which totally takes it to a new level.

Is there anywhere to view the available radio stations before we purchase? I'm really looking for ESPN Radio in chicago and WEEI AM out of Boston.

SCOTT'S REPLY: (also e-mailed)

Josh,
No, there's no way to look, but ...

850 WEEI is i here. Planet Mikey show is on now.

And ESPN 1000 Chicago is in here as well. Pardon the Interruption is currently on.

Gotta get this app!
Scott

Great App! I have always loved local AM talk radio.
Currently enjoying!
Thanks

SCOTT'S REPLY: Glad you like it, Kevin.

Hey Scott,
Just wanted to thank you for this AWESOME blog. I read it religiously, several times a day for all the updates. Your reviews have been an immense help in guiding me in trying new apps.

Wunder Radio is extremely impressive. I was drooling at the thought of monitoring police/fire scanners (that takes me back to about 10 years ago when I was a scanner geek). Unfortunately I couldn't get any scanner channels to buffer/connect. The "help" page suggested hitting "more", but there is no such button. I have a strong 3G signal in Burbank. Ah well.
Getting just about any AM or FM frequency helps fill the void that AOL Radio creates, since they are CBS only.

Between all of these awesome radio and user controlled music listening apps, its becoming harder to justify my satellite radio subscription (although I would miss Howard Stern).

Keep up the excellent work.

Kyle,
Fellow iPhone Nut

SCOTT'S REPLY: Thank you, Kyle, for the kind words. I had some buffering issues with police scanners, but after the initial one I had no problem. Of course, I went from 3G to Wi-Fi between the two tries, so that could have something to do with it.

Keep the great reviews coming. I like the indepth analysis - this is exactly what I needed and you describe the void well. -Boya

SCOTT"S REPLY: Glad you like, boya. Appreciate the kind words.

I'm super mad at you. You're costing me too much money. Wurdle, Wunderadio, Photoboard, and all the on sale apps I bought in the past week...

You find all the best stuff.

To show my appreciation, I found an awesome free app that I'm totally addicted to.
Word Warp. Give it a try.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I haven't tried Word Warp, but I will. Yeah, I hear you about the cost. Sorry about that ;-)

Great App! I have been a WUnderground member for several years. They do a great job. Denver, Co does not have a good Rock station. So now I get to rock it out with FM99 in Hampton Roads, VA. I have tried several of the radio apps, but none are done as well as this one! Thanks for the tip!

SCOTT'S REPLY: I'm glad you like it ... and yeah, while it's great to hear what's going on at stations you haven't heard of, there's nothing quite like listening to a local station when a big event is going on -- whether it's a baseball playoff or a natural disaster like a hurricane. It's just a different way of hearing the news.

Thank you very much for posting about WunderRadio. Without your blog, I never would have found it, and, yes, it is the best application, hands down. A few stations aren't streaming, but considering THE WORLD is in the palm of your hand, I can't complain one bit. Another stroke of iPhone magic genius!

SCOTT'S REPLY: I agree. And what's great is that the developers want to know every single stream that's not working so they can fix it. Love that kind of dedication. And yeah, I was shocked that some other sites didn't mention it. Of course, they will now and say that they found it, but we know the truth!! :-D

It looks promising, but only if you live in larger metropolitan areas. I live in the Sherman/Denison, Texas area and there is very little local station coverage, no scanner coverage, and no weather radio coverage (I can get Dallas and a Ft. Worth NOAA channels, but that's 60-80 miles away).

I know there is a local (Grayson county) NOAA channel since I have heard it on weather radios before. There are only two scanner channels for the entire state, so that is disappointing.

For what it does have, it seems to do well, but I haven't been able to get the RDS info to show up yet...

SCOTT's REPLY: But remember one thing, Jeff, while you may be right about that, I think the bigger purpose of the app is not to stream your local station but to open up a look at radio to people who might not otherwise have access to it -- when I hear a station I haven't heard for 20 years because it's somewhere else in the country, it's very, very nostalgic.

Hey Scott! Do you see any stations from Buffalo, NY in there? If you could let me know, I would appreciate it! Thanks so much!

Mike

SCOTT'S REPLY; Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, Mike, I know you found out the answer already. I'm glad you like the app!

This is definitely the best radio app so far, but I still can't get BBC channels to play, or RTE (Irish state broadcaster) either. I suppose this is because they need RealPlayer to handle whatever format they are in. Will it be possible for this app to handle these streams in the future I wonder?

Sometimes I can get the BBC channels to work, but if they do I only get a looped message telling me This channel is not available due to rights issues. I am in Ireland but I can get BBC fine on my regular Internet radio. It's really annoying when the BBC does stuff like that, they have a brilliant thing called iPlayer where you can stream any TV show from the last week of BBC TV to your iPhone etc, but it's only available in the UK. I wish they'd let us use it in Ireland!

SCOTT'S REPLY: Oh my! I had no problems getting BBC stations, and I should try stations from Ireland, but I didn't. I think the answer to whether or not the app can handle such streams down the road depends on the format of the stream. If the iPhone can't handle a format, there's nothing any app could do to solve that short of rerouting the stream to another format, but I'm not sure how practical that would be. Kind of like Flash - it works or it doesn't.

I took your advice and spent the money for this app. It's very cool. Found several great blues channels. Also checking out the various NPR sites and stuff from every where. I'm an avid reader and like new stuff. Keep it up! Thank

SCOTT's REPLY: Great to hear, Mike. You are most welcome.

Scott,

There are no words! This app is everything you and the folks at Wunder Radio promised. I downloaded it and searched for our local Jazz station, the WAVE and it immediately came on the air as if I were listening to a hard wired radio. AWESOME! I now busy setting up my local AM News and weather stations. Thank you again for giving me yet another facet of my iphone to explore.

Paul

SCOTT'S REPLY: I know! I heard this FM station that I loved on the Jersey Shore and I caught it at the top of the hour and I heard the little jingle and it was the same after like 15 years! So cool.

I emailed last week about trying to get windows media player streams from a radio station in Dallas (I live in Chicago). Bang .... your review of wunder radio pointed me in the right direction! Now I can listen to it on my iphone and not have to worry about my employer firing me for using bandwidth! I would never have found the app nor paid the $6 if I hadn't read your blog. Thanks!

SCOTT'S REPLY: I love it when things work out like that!

" But remember one thing, Jeff, while you may be right about that, I think the bigger purpose of the app is not to stream your local station but to open up a look at radio to people who might not otherwise have access to it "

I would agree except for the wording in the app store:

"Wunderradio will also locate nearby radio stations and NOAA Weather Radio streams."

The key word, for me, is "nearby". They shouldn't have made that claim if it couldn't do what it says. It doesn't say that Wunderradio will play stations in an existing list, it says it "will also locate nearby radio stations and NOAA Weather Radio streams". To me, that means it can find streams for local stations and, more importantly, NOAA Weather Radio.

Given that the app is put out by Weather Underground, I don't think it's too much to expect my local NOAA Weater channel.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I e-mailed Jeff on this, realizing that I wasn't clearly understanding the original comment ... there's a place where you can ask about this sort of thing at the developer's site so I'm going to look into it and see if I can find anything out.

This is amazing. I've been dying to listen to my favorite radio station in the morning. The sound is great, too! I'm very pleased with this App and it was very well worth the $5.99. Thanks for posting about it!

SCOTT'S REPLY: You are welcome. Glad you are enjoying it. I'm still singing those old radio jingles from my childhood -- and my favorite morning show in New York is STILL intact after 20 years. That's unheard of and wonderful for me.

Can you get Live 365 stations?

SCOTT'S REPLY: I do not believe this app works with Live 365 specifically, Jon.

I've read a ton of reviews but I still have 1 question; does it play windows media player streams??? Pls email me if u can help... I really want to buy this app... But I want to be able
To hear wmp streams.(I bought TUNER and it does not play wmp streams)....I don't want to spend $6 on an app that won't work ...

SCOTT's REPLY: Should be good, Dennis. This information comes directly from the folks at the company:

WunderRadio provides links to the web site of the radio station that you are listening to as well as information on any songs that are playing. When listening to the weather radio stations users can link to Weather Underground's free iPhone weather. The application features internet radio stations that are streamed by Windows Media and MP3 formats -- providing users with a vast number of stations.

hi scott this is a fantastic app and works out better then the web radio i brought for over £200'
I have a fantastic new hobby now listning to world radio.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I can't get over how much I love it.

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