Under the Bridge

Ah, yes. What could be more natural a web application for an iPhone or iPod than a custom radio feed over teh InterTubes? Well, that’s the theory behind Stitcher.com, “Custom radio that plays the news and talk you want.”

In their words,

Our service enables you to hear the audio content you care about. We “stitch” it into personalized, always-current stations that you can easily listen to on your iPhone or computer.

Stitcher revolutionizes information radio because it is:

Customized: we learn what you like and don’t like – so we can serve you better and better content 
Easy: just start listening, we’ll take care of the rest 
Portable: stream Stitcher anywhere: no satellite device, Wi-Fi or syncing required

It does work to the desktop as well, but the interesting part to us is its iPhone support. Let’s go log in, which is free and straightforward, if you have an iPhone:

and once we’ve done that, we’re presented with a channel list:

Tap to list individual feeds; tap again on a feed of interest; and you’re presented with ‘Share’, ‘Add to Favorites’, and ‘Start’. Takes a few seconds to buffer, and you’re listening. Clean design, straightforward functionality, effective execution; a fine, fine example of an iPhone web application.

The favorites list follows the same format and updates on the next reload between desktop and device views of the page, conveniently enough; here’s the feeds I have set now for whenever I’m out and about in a listening mood.

And this leads us to the only issue that arose in my whirlwind site review, examining the above it struck me that obviously the Onion Radio News should be first on the list. However, if there is a way to reorder the entries, it’s not intuitively self-evident. We’ve messaged support with that concern, and we’ll see whether it’s actually not possible, or requires more dexterity than troll paws are capable of, or what.

That minor quibble aside, the Stitcher folk seem to have it all together; the functionality is useful, if not quite the range of content to count as compelling quite yet, the implementation is generally well done, and the price is perfect. An excellent showcase site for why iPhones rock.

h/t: Mashable!