How to listen again without iPlayer - thanks to the a post on the iPlayer forums

You can listen again without using iPlayer by constructing the RealAudio link manually, and passing the link to the RealAudio player.

The RealAudio link is in the form: rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/xxxx_ddd.ra
where ‘xxxx’ is the time the program started
and ‘ddd’ is the day of the week (mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun).

Here are a few examples:

Just a Minute - rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1830_mon.ra
Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive: rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1830_fri.ra
Afternoon play from 14:15 Friday rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/1415_fri.ra

To grab a stream and turn it into an mp3 podcast:
You need to download Net Transport from http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm

Then paste as a new job in Net Transport, and, if you have broadband, you’ll have a 9Mb realaudio file on your desktop in about a minute.

You can, of course, play it standalone, but if you want to play it in the car, the mobile, the mp3 player, you need to get

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm
http://winamp.com/
http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/ - a winamp plugin.

Install Real Alternative, then Winamp, then configure Winamp input plugin > Nullsuft Directshow decoder and add ;RA to the end of the list of handlers.

Then test that Winamp plays back the .ra file, and if it does, just go to the output plugins and configure the lame output plugin, then play the file (it will play back silently when encoding of course - don’t forget to re-select the normal audio plugin afterwards!) and Beeb’s yer Aunty.

I’ve checked the terms and there’s nothing against doing this. The terms say:

“3.You may not copy, reproduce, republish, download, post, broadcast, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use bbc.co.uk content in any way EXCEPT for your own personal, non-commercial use.”

Which makes this all perfectly legit, for any knee-jerk reactionists out there!

Tags: bbc,freeware,mp3
Categories: tech stuff
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Google has recently launched several new tools, most of which are still in beta, although VERY functional.

Some are online, so are downloadable apps. Some have been recently improved. There’s a lot of new satellite data in Google Earth, for example.

One I particularly like is Sketchup, an incredibly easy and free CAD tool. OK, it’s not Autocad - it’s better!

Then there an online web page maker, an online spreadsheet, Writely (online word processing) Google Calendar which beats the pants of any other web calendar out there. And see some of my photos on Picasaweb, an online photo gallery in early beta, but which may have the potential to put Flickr in the shade.

Know of any others?

Keep an eye on
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ and http://google.blogspace.com/

Tags: earth,freeware,google
Categories: Uncategorized
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