Here are more stories that we don’t want you to miss, especially some more lighthearted pieces about ambulances overriding car radios and comic book podcasts. So we we’re going to compile them in our end-of-the-week round-up.
- Last fall Microsoft launched the ad-supported Xbox Music streaming service on its Xbox 360 game console, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. According to The Verge next week the company is going to bring the service to the web browser, making for yet another competitor in the increasingly crowded streaming music market.
- Looking for some fresh podcasts, but don’t know where to look? The new Swell smartphone app aims to be the Pandora of podcasts, playing new podcasts based upon the ones you listened to, liked or skipped.
- free103point9 alerts us to a call for audio entries to be aired on a radio-art station to broadcast as part of the Addicted2Random festival in Halle/Saale, Germany, July 10 – 13. The festival is about “acoustic mapping of the coincidental” and entries should touch on issues like computer generated music and ideas for new forms of radio. Interested? Get crackin’. The deadline is July 5.
- Ever wish you could override and take over every radio within a kilometer radius? Apparently ambulances in Guayaquil, Ecuador are doing just that, using a blanketing low-power transmitter to alert drivers… at least the ones still listening to radios.
- Comics fan Dan Turner writes “podcasting about comics is like dancing about architecture” for the KQED Pop blog. Listening to podcasts about comic books he notes that most of the discussion is about story, with much less attention paid to the visual elements of this very visual medium.