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Radio Garden – Listen to world radio by navigating an interactive globe

527 points| gamma_raj | 9 years ago |radio.garden

110 comments

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[+] studiopuckey|9 years ago|reply
Developer here. We weren't exactly expecting this to become as popular as it did.. Just survived being #1 on Reddit – sheesh.

It seems our non-profit Bing maps key was revoked.. Switched to Arcgis imagery instead for now. Too bad, the Bing imagery was really great.

[+] SiVal|9 years ago|reply
I love this thing you've made. I've been exploring the world with radio since long before the WWW was invented. I used to carry a shortwave radio with me wherever I traveled back in the 1970s and 80s. I would lie there in the dark in Japan listening to the broadcasts out of North Korean screeching about the "Great Leader" (Kim Il-sung) or in Thailand listening to the Khmer Rouge (whom I couldn't understand, but I knew who controlled Cambodian broadcasts) or in the UK listening to Africans (not putting on a show for Americans but putting on a show for their own people) or on the East Coast of the US listening to callers to talk shows in the UK arguing about local issues. What do people there talk about amongst themselves? What do they like to listen to? What does such-and-such language sound like? I loved exploring the world this way.

My kids don't understand how magical the world is today--how they can do what cost me so much money and time and effort by doing nothing more than poking a few icons on their phones. These things don't mean much to them; they were born into a world where magic was just daily life.

But, things like this are still magical to me, even though I've been a developer for decades. Somehow, even knowing how the "tricks" are done, I still think it's magic. Just tonight, I fed YouTube into my HD TV and watched as someone walked around my old neighborhood in Tokyo with a 4K camera. Then again where I used to live in Seoul. And a couple of days ago, I found something for my father out in the desert a thousand miles from here by using Google Street View to "drive" down a remote highway, looking around until I found it. And now I can just spin the globe and point at a dot to hear a broadcast coming from that location. I've been listening to online broadcasts for 20 years using lists of online radio stations, but this is so much nicer.

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one who sees all of this as real-world magic.

[+] mrleinad|9 years ago|reply
Amazing work!

Suggestions:

- Let the radio keep playing while the user scrolls the map and until they click on a different spot.

- Run a kickstarter for creating a mobile app for this and getting a paid key to the Bing maps. Having the MVP already running I think it'll sell like candy!

- Labels for the stations, cities, etc. The UI should be great on this, so the user feels like traveling across the world! Maybe even include Google Street View? Not sure, just a thought..

Again, amazing work!

[+] ddon|9 years ago|reply
Make it as an mobile app! Hard to use it as a tab in a browser on the phone, but app is amazing! it!
[+] voltagex_|9 years ago|reply
It actually looked pretty cool without the basemap.

Perhaps talk to MapBox? They might be amenable to giving you a few more map views.

[+] rrego|9 years ago|reply
How did you populate this map? I looked at the Transnational Radio Encounters dataset and didn't find a list of stations, let alone a link to their stream.
[+] danielmooreicr|9 years ago|reply
I love this! There are some missing stations in Norfolk, UK, Suffolk, UK and London, can I submit these? You are missing: Future Radio (107.8fm)(Norwich, Norfolk) Radio Caroline (DAB)(Norwich, Norfolk) North Norfolk Radio (96.2fm, 103.2fm)(Norwich, Norfolk) Norwich 99.9FM (99.9fm)(Norwich, Norfolk) Kiss 105-108 (Norfolk 106.1, Suffolk 106.4) TheBeach (103.4fm, 97.4fm)(Lowestoft, Suffolk & Gt. Yarmouth, Norfolk) Town 102 (102.0fm)(Ipswich, Suffolk) ICR FM (105.7fm)(Ipswich, Suffolk) Dream 100 (100.2fm)(Colchester/Clacton On-Sea, Essex) Magic (105.4fm, DAB)(London) Kiss100 (100.0fm, DAB)(London)
[+] weab00|9 years ago|reply
Radio Garden has been stuck on "Planting Radio Garden" (http://i.imgur.com/ncmxjrm.png) for a while now. Is this because of poor connection on my part, or is it le Reddit Hug of Death?

Amazing website, though.

edit: Apparently it's a Chrome problem. Works fine in Firefox. Cheers!

[+] pmontra|9 years ago|reply
Great interface, well done!

Ubuntu 16.04: it works in Opera, doesn't work in FF (I'm probably blocking something vital with one of the various privacy add ons).

Android 6 tablet: it doesn't work in either the stock browser (updated yesterday) and Firefox.

[+] nirv|9 years ago|reply
Hey, amazing project! Surfed over Eastern world radio stations for about an hour. Didn't found any convenient way to report bug, but currently Georgia (country, not state) is shown as "Tbilisi, United States".
[+] metafunctor|9 years ago|reply
Wow, I remember playing with a my grandfather's AM tube radio as a small kid, and this brought me right back to those days. Very, very cool.

Where are you getting the data? How do you find the stations and coordinates?

[+] faitswulff|9 years ago|reply
I actually like the Arcgis imagery better. It's easier to tell at a glance where I am in the world. Then again, I don't know if it was fully functioning when I saw the Bing imagery.
[+] s_kilk|9 years ago|reply
Great app!

One suggestion: add a volume control. It's far too loud even at minimum volume on my Macbook.

[+] twolochs|9 years ago|reply
How can we get a missing radio station added?

Alex Two Lochs Radio www.2lr.co.uk

[+] disillusioned|9 years ago|reply
Oh man, this is so much fun. I'm listening to radio in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the male and female host are bickering about how winter is, in fact, NOT coming this year. And now they're playing John Mayer.

So much more perspective than just whatever the news media wants the narrative to be about some of these places. (And I've traveled plenty, but this is just a lovely taste of day-to-day for people on the other side of the planet, but fortunately in English!)

[+] malikNF|9 years ago|reply
Amazing example of how good UI can make something so interesting and useful.

I have seen plenty of websites which lists the radio stations from all over the globe, but this interface makes it so much more interesting and fun.

Really well done to the devs.

[+] prawn|9 years ago|reply
Love the concept and simple design. Very cool. Resist those wanting land boundaries added; it will lose some mystery then.

Reminds me of that not-uncommon movie intro implying that aliens are listening to Earth, where the camera zooms in on the planet as random stations and static play.

[+] anc84|9 years ago|reply
Seconding leaving the boundaries out. What would be awesome though is day/night simulation!
[+] dilliwal|9 years ago|reply
Amazing product!

I was curious to know their source of stations; the history ones are coming from: http://www.transnationalradio.org/database#Search - which they have mentioned on their page as well.

LIVE ones are streaming directly from the streaming websites, further searching in their code and looking the URLs it seems its shoutcast.com API its the same thing I used a decade back with winamp! but as they didn't mention it anywhere I am not sure.

The way they presented it with map, history is simply great.

[+] dpitkin|9 years ago|reply
Two additional global radio places to explore:

global time machine with http://radiooooo.com/ and streaming with http://tunein.com/radio/regions/

[+] voltagex_|9 years ago|reply
TuneIn's app (at least on Android) has got worse and worse over the years. I think there's even ads in the "pro" version now that I paid for a while back. Also, why does a radio streamer need access to my contact list?
[+] tibu|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for radiooooo.com. I like it, although the URL is not so user friendly. :)
[+] JoeDaDude|9 years ago|reply
Fantastic app! (But I'm keeping my short wave radio anyway). Can't help but notice vast areas of radio deserts. I presume there are at least radio broadcasts there, but they don't stream?

What is the meaning of the size of the dots? I was guessing it's related to transmit power?

[+] andresgottlieb|9 years ago|reply
I think it represents the number of radio stations available for that city (each dot is a city, and you can switch individual radio stations using the list at the lower right corner of the screen)
[+] sangnoir|9 years ago|reply
> Can't help but notice vast areas of radio deserts. I presume there are at least radio broadcasts there, but they don't stream?

It's most likely missing data in the radio directory they are using - I know of 5+ streaming channels in 2 African countries, yet both countries are totally blank.

[+] LesZedCB|9 years ago|reply
If you are into amateur radio, this [1] does something similar, allowing you to tune into amateur bands across the world in real time.

[1] http://websdr.org/

[+] jff|9 years ago|reply
And it lets you listen to real radio, not streams, which will improve coverage outside of the US and Europe (found two streaming stations in Japan, neither of which work, and about a dozen in all of India)
[+] dziungles|9 years ago|reply
One suggestion: maybe change the background to something black. Then it will feel more like the Earth is a part of cosmos - a context will be shown and will create a nicer feeling.
[+] Sideloader|9 years ago|reply
Cool! I even like the fake static and squelch... it reminds me of tuning the 80s era shortwave radio I found when I was a kid.
[+] fernly|9 years ago|reply
Brilliant concept and execution! I figured, it must be every station that has a live stream, but no, my nearest station, KZSU Stanford, has multiple streams and isn't there. And the list of presences in the one green dot in SF is much too short. So... what's the source?
[+] jejones3141|9 years ago|reply
As it appears to me (running Chrome on Linux) it's really hard to go looking for a particular location, since it's just dots on a solid blue browser tab. Is that by design? (Also, it shows stations in Madrid, Spain at a spot that I think is a bit west of Ames, Iowa.)
[+] studiopuckey|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for the heads up on this – should be working again now.
[+] zerohp|9 years ago|reply
There is a small town named Madrid just southwest of Ames, Iowa.
[+] niij|9 years ago|reply
I love this! I love the static when tuning as well as how quickly it starts playing from each station. The only suggestion I have it to put political boundaries so it is easier to see where you're at.
[+] handedness|9 years ago|reply
On the contrary, I think adding political boundaries would remove some of the power of the concept.
[+] pavel_lishin|9 years ago|reply
I just turned into an Australian DJ bitching about the fact that they get charged extra for online listeners, vs. over-the-air listeners.
[+] noobermin|9 years ago|reply
Simply awesome. Ironically, I haven't had a radio in years and I don't own a car, but I found a local radio station I've never listened to before.

The designer's website is a trip too[0].

[0] http://puckey.studio/

[+] Hondor|9 years ago|reply
That real time typing reminds me of chatting via direct modem connection to your friends. It gives a slightly better awareness of the person's feelings. Instant messengers now don't seem to do that, I guess the latency on the global internet is too high.
[+] futne|9 years ago|reply
Why are you using WebGL for this with no other option? I am using Chrome because it is infinitely faster than Firefox. I get the following message from your site:

    Error constructing CesiumWidget. Visit http://get.webgl.org to verify that your web browser and hardware support WebGL. Consider trying a different web browser or updating your video drivers. Detailed error information is below:

    RuntimeError: The browser supports WebGL, but initialization failed. Error at new t (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:13:1700) at new B (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:37:3393) at new ce (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:36:6010) at new e (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:32:898) at t.e.value (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:10:9355) at t.e.value (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:9:21370) at e.notifyAll (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:5:4913) at r.h.close (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:7:12663) at r.o.closeAll (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:5:8329) at r.o.perform (http://rg-60c3.kxcdn.com/bundle-792cb1b42393ce14840f.js:5:7818)
From `http://get.webgl.org` I get

    While your browser seems to support WebGL, it is disabled or unavailable.
I tried to enable WebGL and found that it was only experimental for application development:

    chrome://flags
    
    WebGL 2.0 Prototype Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android
    Enabling this option allows web applications to access the experimental WebGL 2.0 feature. This option should only be used for application development, and should not be used when browsing arbitrary web sites. #enable-unsafe-es3-apis
So I am required to enable something that is warned against just to be able to use a single site. Not exactly what I would consider user friendly
[+] 10dpd|9 years ago|reply
Is an open source list of radio streams available, e.g. with URL/name/lat/long?