internet radio

Joe has his own radio station on a "mom and pop" radio station and he wants to expand to the Internet. He'd like to do it legal, but also do it free. Leo says that streaming music is more expensive than broadcast. Leo recommends going to Live365.com. They will take care of the license fees and it's not very expensive. You can get a free account, but it's ad supported. It's not that expensive to have a paid account and it's a great option.

iHeart Radio is a radio app for Clear Channel Radio Stations, available on computers, phones, or internet connected radios. Leo says that running a computer with a braille keyboard would make it easy to use the computer online. He could use a screen reader like JAWS, but it isn't cheap.

A good, affordable way is to use a smartphone like the iPhone running Siri. Both iPhone and Android also has special assistive features that will read the phone screen for him.

Leo says using Flash isn't as bad on the desktop as it is on mobile. Leo doesn't like Flash, but Adobe is getting better at keeping it up to date on user's computers. She could even use Flash without even installing it as a separate plug-in by downloading the free Google Chrome at google.com/chrome. The way Chrome handles Flash is much more secure.

Kali wants to do a radio show online and he'd like to pull up sound effects and clips quickly. There are plenty of software options, and even a hardware option, to do this:

• SoundBoard

This is an iPad app by Ambrosia Software. This would let him assign sounds to buttons on pages. This is what Leo would recommend doing.

Bill would like a Wi-Fi Radio that will keep it's settings when he moves it from room to room. Leo likes the Mondo by Grace. It has a large LCD screen, supports Pandora, iHeartRadio, Receiva, and has a battery backup so it keeps its settings. It costs about $200.

Songza is internet radio similar to Pandora, except with Songza users can find music based on moods instead of favorite artists. John heard about it on iPad Today hosted by Sarah Lane on TWiT. Songza also has an iOS and Android app and even is available on Sonos. Songza is free, although it's only available in the US for now.

Since he wants to play commercial music on this radio station, it gets a little tricky with licensing. If it was just him doing talk shows, it's a much easier thing to do. There are a few solutions for this:

• Live 365

This is the one that Leo likes and recommends. They make it easy to create a station, and also handle the licensing. There's a good community there, and he'll also be in a directory where people can discover his station. This also would mean he'd get on internet radio devices.