Several years ago, I had many ideas for the CIRadio. Most of them never came to be due to limitations in multimedia streaming technology. Basically, I was limited to Windows Media in all instances because it was what everyone had. If my listeners did not have a program that could play the stream, then that was it - they weren't listening.

Also, to play the media files right on the web page required embedding the Windows Media player, a process which was likely to fail on the varying configurations across my client's computers. The embedded Windows Media player was clunky and archaic.

I am a big fan of the Icecast server and I would like to use Ogg streaming for everything, but the problem is that practically no one has the capability of playing Ogg files. When I brought my music library to college and set up a server so that my other three apartment-mates could listen, they were all perplexed as to why the files wouldn't play in iTunes or Windows Media Player! MP3 stream is a good second choice, but even with this WMP cannot play it (iTunes can, but back in the day when I was working on the CIRadio the world had not gone crazy and bought millions of iPods)

An alternative was to run a Java applet player - it works, but will not run on the regular old "Microsoft" Java platform. It needs the genuine one from Sun. Again, if the listener has to download something - say goodbye. They will not hear a single second of the broadcast.

So, for the past few years I have run CIRadio with m3u and wax files - playlists that are loaded into Windows Media Player, Winamp, and iTunes. Instead of playing the sound right on the web page, these fire up the whole shebang and this not only clutters the client's screen but gives them no incentive to keep my web page open.

Then comes MySpace and YouTube which use FLASH to play mp3 files right on the web page using a little Flash movie. Because nearly every web site in the world uses Flash somewhere, damned near everyone has the player. This technology had been around before the rise of MySpace and YouTube, but it was so obscure that one had to build their own player - and without buying Macromedia Flash for whatever number of hundred dollars, that was not possible.

Now, one can find pre-made flash movie players such as the one from jeroenwijering.com that I am using in the re-working of CIRadio. The author of these gems refrained from writing their name all over the thing and licensed it under a Creative Commons license which grants non-commercial use under share-alike and attribution.

The Flash Player is nice, as it is free from the cruft of Java applets and embedding. The next step: Support OPEN formats such as Ogg. Ogg plays the same on every computer, and every software developer can access the code required to support it - no matter what their financial situation. Only Adobe can make that kind of change - they control the vast world of Flash players.

The Update of CIRadio will use FLV format video and MP3 audio playing right inside the browser window, with alternative Ogg Theora and Vorbis files available for those who wish to use them. The Ogg files will be unstreamable (above the bitrate of my cable modem upload) but of higher quality than the FLVs and MP3s.