Monday, June 16, 2008

AOL Radio

I have been a long-time member of the "AOL sucks" club. I signed my name in blood as a member of this club when I tried for three days to get Internet access working for my laptop in someone's home that had AOL as the Internet provider. AOL has historically provided a horrific user interface which constantly thinks it knows better than you and gets in your way whenever you want to do anything different from the standard.

But I've found one piece of AOL that is just, what can I say, nice... It's AOL Radio, which I bumped into when reading a NY Times article about how AOL Radio will soon be available on the iPhone. I tried the Acoustic Rock station, and it's really quite high quality, and the user interface, is, well, simple and - gasp - easy to use!

I have tried a number of interfaces for free Internet radio, and they are either impossible to use, have a horrible selection, or are filled with ads. AOL Radio has none of these limitations. And all you need is Flash to get going. They do seem to have song-skipping disabled, but that's supposed to come back soon.

Pretty nice, and from such an unexpected source! :)

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