Listen to any BBC Radio live stream using VLC including Radio 1 and 1Xtra

Play Radio 1 in VLCIf you want to listen to BBC Radio 1 Live stream you can do so by going to their website and clicking “Listen Now” but that will load the HTML player and if like me you keep accidentally closing your web browser it will stop the stream.

I much prefer using VLC (free) to listen to my streaming audio and it’s possible to listen to the Radio 1 stream using VLC but it proved tricky to try and locate the URL of the live stream so for those that are struggling:

http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r1.asx

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How to share a link to your iTunes Ping profile with others

Apple iTunes 10 was both announced and launched yesterday (1st Sept 2010) and one of the new features Steve Jobs showed us was Ping.

Ping is the new social networking side of iTunes that lets you follow artists and friends to see what they are listening to, tracks they are buying, concerts coming up etc. Sounds great but how do you get your friends to find and follow you? This bit should be simple but in a very un-Apple-esque way it isn’t.

Fortunately you can just copy a link to your profile and send that to friends via email/twitter/facebook/etc.

First you need to launch iTunes and then click on the Ping icon underneath store:

How to enter Ping in iTunes 10

You should now see your own personal profile page. All you need to do here is right click (ctrl-click) on your name at the top and then select “Copy Link” from the drop-down list. This copies a link to your profile onto your clipboard that you can paste into an email, tweet, etc

The link will look similar to:

http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=92779645 [This is my profile link btw]

and will open your web browser and should then automatically open your iTunes and navigate to your Ping profile page for others to easy hit the follow button.

BBC Launch iPhone specific page to listen to podcasts.


The BBC has now launched a special iPhone specific web page to allow you to browse and listen to all the BBC podcasts on your iPhone.

You can simply go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your iPhone now, the site will recognise that you are browsing from your iPhone and take you straight to the iPhone-formatted version of the page.

If you go the the link from a normal web browser on your computer you will be presented with the normal full version of the page. For those of you who want to see what the iPhone version looks like in your normal browser then go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/ip/#_welcome

I’ve just quickly tabbed through the directory and started streaming the Chris Moyles podcast, started instantly from within Safari as a “video”, basically the quicktime player.

If you’d like to listen to it on the journey to work/college/etc I’ve just tried turning my wifi connection off and it continues to play. If you start listening to it while you’re at home and give it enough time to cache the entire podcast (keep an eye on the white timebar, that’s showing you download progress you can continue to listen on the move.

BBC – Radio – Podcasts – Directory