Mitchell and I are guests on today's TechForum LIVE! weekly radio webcast. We will be discussing NAC (no surprise there). If you like, the show starts at noon east coast time. However, I think you can also listened to a recorded version afterwards. Anyway, it should be lots of fun and sorry about the short notice. I think they allow live questions as well, if you would like to call in and ask us something.
I was in the mall with the boys today waiting for Bonnie to finish shopping. We found a nice place to wait with some comfortable recliner chairs they had out to sit on in the middle of the mall. I found myself right next to the kiosk for XM Satellite Radio. I have lusted after digital satellite radio for some time but could not justify the cost when regular radio worked fine. However, in talking to the guy I could not believe how cheap they had become. I was able to pick up a Delphi Roady 2 for just 
$24.99, plus it came with no activation charges and one month of free service. After that it is about 10 dollars a month. It was this really tiny (smaller than an iPod) cool receiver that gets all 150 channels of XM service and performs all kinds of digital organization. I justified it because Bonnie's cars radio LED is on the fritz and was hard to see what channel was on plus we live right on the boarder of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Though we get a lot of channels none of them are very strong as we are on the border of the territories of most stations. Also, whenever we go up to Orlando or anywhere out of county, you just can't get good radio.
So, I bring it home, read the directions and bring it out in Bonnie's car. The good news is I got it up and running fine in about 10 minutes. The bad news is that I have wires all over the place. There is a wire from the special antenna they give you that attaches via magnet to the car roof. There is another wire that is the power wire from the lighter to the unit. Then a 3rd wire from the unit to a cassette plug that goes in the existing radio so the sound comes out the speakers. You don't have to use this as you can send it through FM modulation except I have stations on all of the available presets. I listened to it all tonight and tomorrow in the light of day I will try to hide the wires as best I can. However, if I can't do it I think I am going to return it and try again another time. If anyone has any experience with XM radio and feels strongly one way or another about it, let me know.
I must be doing something wrong but am stumped. On the way home from my sister's house in Port St. Lucie last night I was really wanting to listen in on the Yankees playoff game against the Angels (which they won by the way). I did a scan of the AM radio dial and heard no baseball games at all. I was actually amazed at how little I heard clearly, period. When I arrived home I watched the rest of the game and then set out to figure out what local radio affiliate would be carrying the national feed of the major league baseball playoffs in case I found myself in the same position again. It was being broadcast by Fox, so I went to their web site. This led me to Fox Sports where they did have a section for Fox Sports Radio. They give the entire schedule in eastern time zone and claim over 180 affiliates. Do you think they would have a search feature either by zip or map to find the local affiliate in your area, of course not. After getting pretty frustrated looking for this, I turned to Google and searched Fox sports affiliates, South Florida. I was amazed at how many pages were scams that had nothing to do with Fox, radio or sports. Anyway, nothing came up, other than an old press release saying that a station that used to be a local Fox Sports station had switched to being an Air America affiliate (I will write about Air America another day). I kept searching and after about 45 minutes with no success threw in the towel. It is enough to make you go out and buy one of the satellite radio services. Anyway, what should have been an easy thing for me to find on the web has now turned me off to Fox Sports Radio. I did find out though that I could get updates and streaming info on the playoffs to my cell phone. Also, you can watch just about any game on your computer streamed live now as well (they use Quova technology, another company that Rajat Bhargava started and Brad Feld funded, for IP geolocation for blackout purposes). Lesson of the story, don't get caught driving in the car during the baseball playoffs.
