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Getting Your News as MP3s?
GreenKiwi asks: "I've been really interested in finding a news source that has MP3s of their brodcasts. I have an iPod and download the news in text form most mornings to it so that I can find out what's going on. However, I would love to download (preferably automatically) news in the form of an MP3 that I could download to my iPod in the morning so that I could listen to the news on my way to work. The BBC has Real Audio output, but no MP3s that I can find. NPR has them for Real and WMP. I guess I could download and then convert the files. If that's possible. I'd love to hear whether anyone is doing this and how."
Hard News, broadcast by bFM in Auckland, New Zealand. Russell Brown is very love/hate, but it's quite an intellectual take on current events.
Prisoner #655321
Damn these domain name tussles...
:)
It's now at http://www.95bfm.co.bz.
Listening to tractors as mp3s probably isn't very enlightening!
Prisoner #655321
The Text-Mode RealMedia Player (TRPlayer) is a RealMedia player for Unix which has a command-line interface. It can play RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, and all other media types supported by RealPlayer under Unix. TRPlayer was designed especially for blind Unix users, who don't yet have access to the graphical user interface. However, it is also useful to others; it is a good tool for background audio playback and for use on low-end hardware, such as Intel 486-based PC's.
Simply pipe this thru your favorite mp3/ogg encoder. You may need to use a cheap x86 Linux box, as OS X isn't supported by Real (yet).
next
Have you looked at audible.com? They offer downloadable audio books, magazines, and newspapers. You can burn CD's of the downloaded audio. As of a couple weeks ago, they support iPod on Mac (with firmware 1.2), as well as several portable players for Windows.
Unfortunately, they don't support Linux (only Windows and Mac). Their files are not straight mp3's, they are something proprietary with copy protection.
Check it out, this may be what you are looking for!
I have a crontab entry which just records what I want to hear each day. It uses rawrec, sox, and bladeenc to do the job.
/archive/radio && /usr/local/bin/rawrec -c 1 -s 32000 -f u8 -t 3600 | sox -b -r 32000 -u -t raw -c 1 - -t wav - 2>/dev/null | /usr/local/bin/bladeenc -128 -quiet STDIN $FILENAME.mp3
Here is an example crontab entry:
0 18 * * 1-5 FILENAME=foo-`date +\%Y\%m\%d`_1 ; cd
Yes, that's a bit of a convoluted command line, but it does the job. I'm sure there's a better way of doing it, but the above has worked for me for quite a while. All you'd have to do is download it to your iPod.
Also, a lot of radio stations and programs have pre-determined times when they cut to commercials. If you're adventurous, you could have those automatically cut out. I've looked into doing it, but never got around to it.
Follow this link. (I am way too lazy to do anything else but link today)
http://www.af.mil/news/radio/latest.mp3
updated five days a week.
Perhaps not the general news that submitter is looking for, but it is news in mp3. I would certainly prefer Ogg Vorbis though.
Phillip
WAMU, one of DC's "public radio" stations streams in MP3 format. http://www.wamu.org
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Unfortunately, they don't archive these shows so you'd have to use something appropriate to save the stream.
A further consideration is the timezone. If you're on the west coast you might be better off ripping an east coast stream overnight, that way your entire morning news program is ready to upload by 6 am, some scheduled recordings could grab the hourly news bites to keep you on top of late breaking events.
Bleh!