We were impressed by the following numbers in a blog post published recently by the Center for Media Research:

A study by Arbitron and Edison Research shows continued growth in usage and ownership of various forms of digital audio platforms, including online radio, iPod/MP3 players, and podcasting. The weekly online radio audience increased significantly in the past year to 17% of the U.S. population age 12 and older; up from 13% in 2008. On a weekly basis, online radio reaches 20% of 25-to-54 year-olds; up from 15% in 2008. 

Bill Rose, senior vice president of marketing, Arbitron Inc., says “The sharp growth in weekly usage of online radio… provides compelling evidence that radio’s digital platforms may be reaching critical mass.”

Here’s CodeMorphic’s take:

All radio station applications play radio. All radio station applications allow you to search and find station based on location, category, or genre (business, classical, rap, etc), and all allow you to “save favorites.”  However, no application today provides stations with a platform to gather feedback or allow listeners to interact. Amazing, isn’t it?

The bottom line is this : radio today is a one-way street. Broadcasters push content, people listen. There is opportunity for stations to provide avenues for users to engage. 

We have a concept for online radio called “Airplay.”  The central point of this platform is to provide listeners and broadcasters the ability to communicate — yes, we’re talking social interaction to facilitate radio station communities.

Market Opportunity:  Looking at radio today from a user-interaction standpoint, users have the ability to “call in” to play games, request songs, etc.  Some stations have text short codes or web forms for contacting the station.  Text is probably the most promising avenue for users to contact the station — simple, quick, and guaranteed the station will receive it.

There are a pile of streaming applications today in the mobile space. But, of those, none provides the listener the ability to reach out to the station. There is simply not a platform available for listeners to send messages, or the stations to receive or respond to a message.  Imagine the community a radio station could develop if a DJ was actually communicating back to the listeners?  Think similar to IM or Twitter in many respects, but focused toward radio.

From the broadcaster’s perspective, such a platform would allow:

• Metrics on number of listeners, average duration, peak times, user’s locations, etc.

• Platform for receiving / sending messages from and  to users, and broadcasting messages.

 • The ability to target ads to users by station or  location.

What do you think?  Does radio have a future online?

Ad-Hoc Distribution is a distribution mechanism iPhone developers use to send apps to their customers without going through iTunes. This post explains how ad-hoc distribution works and how to install an iPhone application using ad-hoc distribution.

Before you start : Get your Device ID!

Each iPhone developer has up to 100 devices to which they can install applications using ad-hoc distribution. So before a developer can send you an application, you must send them your device ID. Instructions for finding your device ID can be found here.

Step 1: Install the mobile provision file

A mobile provision file is a file that says which devices can run an application. In order for you to run an application, the developer needs to send you this file along with the application binary.

To install the file, open the “Applications” window in the iTunes library and drag the file into the large gray window where the applications appear. (You could also drag the file into the LIBRARY node in the tree view on the left of the iTunes window). In the following screenshot, the Applications window is opened. When you drag in the the file, the window will have an outer blue border as shown here:

Unfortunately here is no feedback or message that tells you the file was installed successfully. To verify the file was installed, drag it into iTunes again and you’ll be prompted with a message box that looks like the following. You can either replace or cancel, it doesn’t matter. If you see this message, the mobile provision file was installed correctly.

Step 2: Install the Application.

Along with the .mobileprovision file, the developer will send you the application, typically in a .zip file. Extract the zip. On the mac, you will have a .app bundle. On windows, you will have a .app folder. The name of the bundle/folder will typically be the same name as the application. Drag that bundle or folder into the iTunes Applications window. You should now see the application in iTunes.

The following is an example of dragging the application’s .app folder into the Applications iTunes window in XP.

NOTE: Using the default “Extract” operation in Windows Vista does not seem to work correctly. With Vista, the application will appear to unzip correctly, install into iTunes, but show a warning stating “this application could not be verified” when trying to sync. The only workaround I’ve seen work is to extract the zip on a mac or XP, copy the .app folder to the Vista machine, then copy into iTunes. Sorry, we’re working on finding a better solution (other than just buying a mac :-). See “troubleshooting” below for more information.

Step 3: Ensure the application is set to sync

Click on your device within iTunes. Click on the “Applications” tab on the top. Ensure Sync applications is checked and either All applications or Selected applications and the application you just installed are checked.

Step 4: Sync your phone

Hit sync. If all goes well, the application was installed on your device!

Troubleshooting

Oh boy, where to start.
Unfortunately there are many links in the iPhone application distribution process chain. And with every chain link, there is an opportunity for issues to creep in. Every iPhone developer I know has been tripped up by the distribution process and many could tell you a story regarding lost hours or days for one simple checkbox that was not checked, throwing off the entire process.

I’ll attempt to highlight a few of the common user facing error messages that we have ran into from time to time. Trying to highlight all of the developer errors/problems that we have ran into with the distribution process would fill a long, boring, and frustrating book by itself. If you are a developer still reading this, hoping to find an answer to your ad-hoc distribution issues, you have my sympathy. We’ve been in your shoes. Email us and we’ll help.

1. Vista. As noted above, Vista is problematic when dealing with ad-hoc builds. It appears, however we have not confirmed exactly why, that the default zip extraction does not unzip correctly. We believe it is related to a file naming conflict or a symlink in the zip that Vista (or win32?) cannot handle properly. While we are speculating at the root of the problem, we know with certainty that users experience The application “your app here” could not be verified errors when attempting to sync their devices. The workaround is to unzip this folder on XP or a Mac, transfer it to the vista machine via usb key or network file system, and drop the application into iTunes.

2. The Mobile Provision File is Invalid We’ve seen this error occur when dropping the .mobileprovision file into iTunes. The problem is the .mobileprovision file is corrupt. The corruption typically happens when sending the .mobileprovision file through email. Developers should never edit the .mobileprovision file, so there is very little chance the developer could “invalidate” the file just by accident. If you run into this error, have the developer .zip and send the .mobileprovision file.

iPhone developers have the ability to send out applications on an “ad-hoc” basis to run on a limited number (100) of devices. At CodeMorphic we use ad-hoc distribution to send out application builds to our customers for testing before we put the apps on iTunes.

In order for a developer to send you an ad-hoc build, they will need your Device ID. Getting the device ID is pretty simple, but there are a few gotchas that throw people for a loop.

Step 1: Select your your device in iTunes

Open iTunes and select the node for your device. Select the Summary tab. You’re screen will look like this:

Step 2: Click on “Serial Number”

Click on the Serial Number black label. It doesn’t look like something you can click on, unfortunately, making this more of a “hidden feature”. Serial Number will turn into Identifier (UDID). (Notice also if you keep clicking it you will rotate through a bunch of different numbers - you might want to try cycling through them all a few times). This is what mine looks like:

Step 3: Copy

Unfortunately this is another non-intuitive step. After you see Identifier (UDID) displayed, copy it to your OS clipboard with Ctrl-C (Windows) or Command-C (Mac). And here’s the subtle trick…

Most people try to highlight the UDID - which is almost the universally recognized way to copy something - but for some reason Apple decided to make this unable to be selected. You can’t highlight it. Just hit Ctrl-C or Command-C on this screen and trust that it’s copied to your OS clipboard. Now open an email or a text editor and paste in the clipboard contents. You now have your iPhone device ID.