SA Rocks

I was interviewed for an Austrian radion station, FM4, recently.

There seems to be a growing interest in the SA Elections coming up on Wednesday. Zuma is a focus and the ANC is under scrutiny.

I was asked to speak about freedom of speech in SA, in blogs in SA as well as priorities in the country, major concerns and issues as well as a few other topics.

Click to listen to the audio file from my interview only. Right click, save as, to download.

You can also head over to FM4′s website and listen to a chunk of the show. It’s actually surprisingly interesting and insightful.

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Tonight at 19:30 I will be on SA FM talking about SA Rocks. I’m not too sure of the details surrounding the interview but I was contacted by SA FM yesterday to be on the show with Eric Miyeni.

I have been on Classic FM to talk about SA Rocks which went well as far as radio interviews go but yielded very little response on the blog. Let’s hope that this will be different!

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Believe it or not, this is not a blog post about flying in to space on ten gazillion tons of jet fuel.

This is actually a blog post about a Music Intervention:

The Pan African Space Station (PASS) is a 30-day music intervention from September 12 – October 12, on radio and the internet, as well as venues across greater Cape Town.

It is an opportunity for Capetonians and visitors to engage up-close with the rich and complex web of creative expression which binds Africans across the globe.

To listen to PASS radio you can stream it online.

There are some artists taking part too:

Participating artists include:
the Lagos-Accra based Afrobeat fanfare Ayetoro; famed drummer Cindy Blackman and her quartet (New York); Trinidadian jazz-poet Anthony Joseph and his Spasm band; Electronica-jazz group Bibi Tanga and Professeur Inlassable (Bangui/Paris); Kinshasa’s underground poet laureate Bebson de la rue and his band Tryonix; Carlo Mombelli and his freestyle chamber jazz ensemble Prisoners of Strange (Jhb), Joburg’s art-rockers Blk Jks, Afrofuturist bluesman Madala Kunene (Durban), two Cape Town based collaborative projects, namely Goematronics and the all-female electro project Science Feline and from Joburg, Deejay blaq T as well as R.U.I.’s Dub Vaults by Rui Sorero and Paulo Chibanga.

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Last night I joined Martine and Ian from the HCR Blog and SA Good News respectively on Athol Williams’ show “The state of the nation” on Classic FM.

I thoroughly enjoyed the full hour show and the debate that was sparked. There really is too much to blog about so I have uploaded the podcast to SA Rocks. It’s an hour long but only 13mb in size so feel free to download it and listen.

Click here to download/listen to the podcast.

I tried hard but failed dismally to upload it on to SA Rocks. I just didn’t have the time today to upload it to the site.

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Just a short note to any readers still at their PC’s. I’m going to be on Classic FM tonight at 7pm. That’s 102.7fm or channel 157 on DSTV.

I’ll put the podcast up tomorrow when it’s released! Thanks go out to Ian from SA Good News for involving me. He’ll also be a part of the interview/show.

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Amaradio is making waves, radio waves, apparently. I think the concept is fantastic and would love to know more about the legalities of sharing and recording radio stations on the Internet. I wonder.

Nevertheless the programme exists, it’s available for download and ready to link you up to every radio station imaginable. But not if you have a Mac. Hopefully this is something that will be worked on and according to Twitter discussions it seems so.

Hopefully SaulK isn’t going to listen to 5FM via Amaradio and he can maybe find something a bit more up his musical street.

This is what Gary James (the creator) had to say about his creation:

Twelve days ago I blogged about how I had built a little program to play a radio feed from Sydney.  I’m a software developer in Somerset West, and I built this tool one evening, mostly for the fun of it.

Within 48 hours of blogging, AmaRadio had been downloaded over 100 times!  I then realised how much potential it had, and spent a bit more time working on it.  I added the ability to record radio stations to MP3 files, and I increased the number of supported radio stations to 38.

AmaRadio was then mentioned on several popular websites, including Tectonic, Muti, SouthAfrica.info and MyBroadBand, as well as on several blogs including The Outlet and Eish.  Within 140 hours of releasing AmaRadio we had 500 users!  Today, 12 days after releasing AmaRadio, we have over 2,200!

Most of our users seem to be within South Africa, but we also have a significant number of users in Canada, Australia, and the UK.  These are mostly South Africans who are living abroad.  AmaRadio has even been downloaded by the owner of a South African pub in London, who is now using it in his pub!

AmaRadio is a free download (hence it’s rapid growth rate), and is only 4 MB in size!  So it’s less than 1/10th of the size of Windows Media Player or iTunes!  It can download future updates automatically, and it can record streaming radio to MP3.  I’m planning on adding the ability to schedule AmaRadio so that it records your favourite shows automatically, which you can then listen to on your iPod!

A large corporate is currently considering sponsoring the AmaRadio project.  This will cover my costs, and ensure that AmaRadio remains a free product.

You can download AmaRadio from www.amaradio.co.za, please try it out and tell your friends about it!

I’m loving it because now I can listen to Joburg stations even though I live in the Cape!  This makes for a nice change, and makes the world feel like a smaller place.

Gary James
Founder
AmaRadio.co.za

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