More Observations on INternet Radio

[Brent Harding]

I think the wolffm site does it, too. Some how they show the title in
windows media player. I just wonder how they set that all up, anyways.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Martin McCormick" <martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu>
To: "Linux for blind general discussion" <blinux-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 2:01 PM
Subject: More Observations on INternet Radio


> I understand why javascript is used in some INternet radio
> sites.  A person at work was listening to something called
> clintoncountyradio.com which has a nice mix of sixties-seventies
> oldies and no screaming commercials.  I wanted to listen to it but I
> can see that it and other sites like it are going to be a problem if
> one isn't running a scripting browser like either Internet Explorer or
> firefox and others.
>
> I dug in to the clintoncounty web site and discovered that the
> audio feed comes from live365.com.  By dumping the source of the web
> page related to the program I wanted to listen to, I found an
> interesting process going on.  This is an Internet radio station, not
> just an audio feed of a radio station.  They display the title and
> artist of the song currently playing and the remaining playing time.
>
> I got as far as the playlist url and discovered that it is not
> apparent where the audio stream comes from.
>
> The cascading style sheet loads a bunch of variables in to a
> display and also connects your sound player with the audio feed.
>
> If anybody wants to play with this, try
>
> lynx -source http://www.live365.com/pls/front?handler=playlist\&cmd=view\&
> handle=radioccl\&noBranding=1\&noBuyButtons=1\&site=live365\&
> css=/scp/live365/local.css
>
> Actually, all that needs to be on one line.  Your line will be
> 162 characters long if you want to put it in a script.  I put the
> backslashes in front of the & signs so that it will script and save
> your fingers some work.
>
> If you put that long line in to an executable file such as a
> very tiny shell script, you can easily run it and direct the output to
> a file.  That file will have about 232 lines in it and you can compare
> the file right now to an older copy of the file a short time ago.
> The top 72 lines appear to not change much but the time stamps and
> song information are on lines 73 and above.
>
> I did happen to hit it once between songs and all those fields
> were blank.
>
> I used the links or l i n k s browser for those who are
> listening to this to get past as much of the javascript as I could.
> When I selected the link to listen, links didn't exactly freeze, but
> it got confused and displayed no links.  I saved that link in the
> bookmarks file and retrieved it so as to use lynx or l y n x to
> dismantle the source and get to the point where I did.
>
> I have griped to no end about all the nasty things javascript
> has done to anybody who isn't in on the secret, so to speak, but I
> must admit that this is the first application that makes some sense.
> I still wonder if one could construct the right kind of url that would
> grab the streaming audio minus the display.
>
> Well, back to more experimentation.
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
> OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group
>
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