[STORK] A gadget wish

[Jeff Bone]

So as mentioned previously I've been listening to a lot of radio 
lately.  And while the content's a lot better than I expected it to be 
after the radio wasteland of the late 90s, the medium itself aggravates 
the hell out of me;  we HAVE the technology to make radio a reasonable 
medium, why the fsck don't we use it?  Here's a few meandering thoughts 
on the gadget I want in my car / home to make this stuff workable...

Points along the way:

A buddy of mine has an Empeg.  If you're not familiar with it, it's an 
MP3 player for your car.  Yawn.  But this one is a little Linux box w/ 
a really nice domain-specific (and programmable) UI.  It rocks, 
literally.  Nice box, but that doesn't help radio does it?

Then you've got the XM radio stuff.  Fine, but I refuse to use it for 
various political-technical reasons.  But sure, it's nice because 
you're getting a richer stream.

Tivo:  Tivo makes TV usable.  No shit.  It's the best gadget I've ever 
used.  (I would say second, putting my TiBook first, but TiBook is 
something beyond mere gadget.  Regardless, Tivo's the best "new 
category" device ever, IMHO.)  Now where's Tivo for radio?

Then you've got e.g. Phillips Streamium.

Somewhere, lurking in all those ideas applied to different media, is a 
killer gadget.

---

Basically, what I want in my car is a Tivo for radio.  I want something 
that records and buffers the tuned stream, or maybe monitors and 
captures stuff using some sort of categorical filter on several 
channels in the background.  I want a simple set of features:

	* tune radio broadcasts
	* BONUS:  tune WiFi or wired streams if available
	* pause, rewind, etc. a "buffer" of what I'm listening to
	* record what I'm listening to
	* display the artist etc. metadata for current song
	* store and organize recorded songs on device (fair use!)
	* wirelessly access songs on box from elsewhere via 802.11foo (legal 
stretch)

That's it!

Is that so much to ask?

jb