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FlyCast 2.0 Beta Released – Internet Radio App With Burst Caching & Twitter

by Ronen Halevy on Jun 26th, 2009 at 7:00 am EST
6 Comments »
 
Developer: FlyCast Cost: Free

Product Link >>>
OTA Install Link >>>

FlyCast let me know that they have released a new beta of their FlyCast streaming radio app. Back in March they added Shoutcast support which was awesome and they keep on improving. The beta is free but station caching may cost more once the app is released into the App World in the future. Streaming will remain free but the caching option will be a one time charge.

flycast1 flycast2 flycast3

The latest beta which is very close to final brings:

  • Storm supports both landscape and portrait mode now.
  • Station caching is optional, although I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t use it.
  • New Twitter interface added. Tweet a song and it will post a link to the song on your Twitter feed that any user can click on to be taken directly to that station on FlyCast to hear it.
  • 8900 is supported
  • Much more stable

The best feature in my opinion is that it lets you cache radio stations over your cellular connection and Wi-Fi. If you have a Wi-Fi or good 3G connection it can cache stations at a claimed 10x realtime. This way you can get hours of radio on your BlackBerry in a few minutes. It also means you do not need a constant connection to listen.

To try out the burst caching select a station you want to listen to and select the FlyBack 2 Hours icon. To verify it is working keep an eye out on the little yellow/green “cache indicator” line at the bottom of the player fly by. Once it turns green, that part of the stream is completely cached and you can jump to the next part of the stream. Try caching an hour (should take about 5-10 minutes with a good connection) and then stop playback. Go to My Stuff/Recordings and you’ll see 1 hour of that station cached on your device.

NOTE: Make sure to delete any old version before installing this beta

You can download the app OTA at www.flycast.fm/betabby or comment on their forums at forums.flycast.fm

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 and is filed under News, Software Directory, Utilities.

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6 Comments to “FlyCast 2.0 Beta Released – Internet Radio App With Burst Caching & Twitter”

  1. Posted by: automan69
    June 26, 2009 at 7:28 am EST

    Ok that’s weird..I click on the ota link and get an HTTP error 500.

    Reply
  2. Posted by: Michael Jones
    June 26, 2009 at 9:03 am EST

    Radio streaming app developers, here is what I would like, and what makes sense.

    Not everybody is in the city, see? Some people either live in the country or go there, or spend a lot of time driving on the expressway, going in and out of 3G zones, switching down to EDGE.

    What would be nice is a radio streaming app that caches in a clever manner, and is always searching for, and latching onto a strong connection.

    I work and live in the city, but I also have a farm. The farm only has EDGE, and not everywhere, either. But I drive to the town 10 miles away from the farm for supplies, and that small town has 3G.

    It would be nice if, when I got into a 3G zone, a radio app would discover the 3G, and go ahead and grab up all the radio tracks that it could find for me, on my station(s). Kind of like ‘topping up your gas tank’. Then, when I got back to the farm, it would just drag in radio tracks at the EDGE level, which is a lot slower, but it could simultaneously play the tracks that it downloaded back when I was in town.

    I would also like Viigo to work this way – if Viigo had a network sniffer, that sensed 3G, it could auto-download web data when I got to town, and/or when I walked somewhere on the farm where there was some good EDGE connectivity. I have an unlimited data plan, so I want to get my money’s worth.

    Here is how it is at my farm – there are about four places in my farmhouse that can get only one or two bars ever, and only if the phone is at a particular angle. To make calls, I stick the phone in the window sill and put it on speakerphone, because if I walk around the room, it will drop the call. Seriously, I looked at the cellular tower map, and the towers are all many miles away – I am lucky to get any cell signal.

    Reply
  3. Posted by: Ed
    June 27, 2009 at 5:07 pm EST

    So far it’s flakey. It crashed my curve once and drops the stations a lot. I have to play with it some more but I think I like Slacker’s caching better. Does thing cache to the SD card? I have not determined that yet but it seems to only cache 1 hour’s worth of audio.

    Reply

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