Comments on: Seeking Your Ideas For WBUR iPhone App

By: Nali

Nali — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:28:00 +0000

We need ANDRIOD App please

By: Advertising and the Player

Advertising and the Player — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:08:26 +0000

[...] Boston. (On a related note, PRX is also working with WBUR to build an iPhone app for the station. WBUR is seeking input and ideas for the app from its audience during the planning [...]

By: Amirali

Amirali — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:30:00 +0000

I believe half, if not more, of your listeners have android (and other) phones. Please add an app for these listeners as well. Thanks!

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:31:42 +0000

are you planning blackberry app too?

By: macd

macd — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 17:37:58 +0000

what about those who love the station that don’t have an IPhone. IPhone doesn’t even have a majority of the market share. Why blow off the rest of us? :-( pouts!

By: Rania Kho

Rania Kho — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:25:09 +0000

Inventing your own apps is a phenomenon. For instance, who knew the Bettners would invent something so addictive. I just read a really interesting article about Newtoy Inc./Words with Friends and the Bettner brothers. Check it, I think you’ll find it interesting.

http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2010/June/Words_With_Friends_Tests_Your_Vocabulary.aspx

By: Andrew Phelps

Andrew Phelps — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:06 +0000

Thanks, everyone, for the tremendous response. We have directly incorporated many of these suggestions into the app. An update here: http://wbur.org/2010/05/17/iphone-app-preview

By: oscar

oscar — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:44:07 +0000

regarding the proposed WBUR app..
Is there a way you can have an alarm clock feature so you can set your alarm – either in the app or the other alarm clock already on the phone so it automatically turns wbur to wake you up just same way a clock radio works?? this would be pretty unique.

By: SB

SB — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:38:18 +0000

Somebody mentioned the Guardian newspaper from London – I think it’s one of the best news apps available. Do more of that . . .

By: Dan Essrow

Dan Essrow — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:44:49 +0000

I would like to be able to toggle the settings within the app so that by default it starts playing the live stream as soon as I load the app. In the NPR app, it takes me like 5 or 6 clicks to get the stream going.

By: Roy Fuchs

Roy Fuchs — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:10:39 +0000

Another vote for a Droid app.

Is there something unique you could add about the Red Sox (a Robin Young Report, or Bill Littlefield’s insights??)

By: Helen Rose

Helen Rose — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:18:17 +0000

I’d like to see a mobile-friendly version of the arts calendar.

By: DR

DR — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:52:48 +0000

How about the ability to go back 30 seconds in a report, pause, or save for later function- record, save to playlist, etc. Also love to see more fun stuff like make the little interim song you just heard a ringtone, or have some NPR/BUR type ringtones to choose from. Great ideas all!

By: Jacob Mazonson

Jacob Mazonson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:08:50 +0000

It would be really great to be able to pause live radio like on Tivo. This would be especially convenient when your cell connection isn’t strong enough to listen live.

By: Alan Capewell

Alan Capewell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:22:17 +0000

Not sure if mentioned yet, but simply: What’s on/playing now, by whom?

By: JOHN HART

JOHN HART — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:04:06 +0000

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THAT THE IPHONE WAS AN EXTENSION BY DESIGN OF THE IPOD. ONE THING I HAVE FOUND FRUSTRATING ABOUT NPR AND BUR IS THEIR LACK OF TIME/CARE TO INFORM THEIR LISTENERS EXACTLY WHAT INTERLUDE OR BREAK MUSIC PLAYS BET. ANNOUNCER/PROGRAMMING. I AM CONTINUALLY IMPRESSED WITH THE TUNES GARY WALEIK PLAYS INBETWEEN SPORTS SEGMENTS ON ‘ONLY A GAME’ FOR EXAMPLE. I ALSO HEAR AMAZING JAZZ HAMMOND ORGAN 20 SEC (EST.) BREAK Y TIMNDURING WEIRD MOMENTS (EQUIPMENT FAILURE?). I HAVE TRIED MANY TIMES TO E MAIL THE PLAYLIST TIME SO TO LEARN AND FIND THE TUNES, BUT YOU GUYS DON’T BOTHER. WHY NOT MAKE A I TUNE SUB-LIST OF EVERY INTRO/BREAK SONG YOU USE..EVEN IPOD HAS A FEATURE TO ID SONGS HEARD THROUGH ITS MIKE!!!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:40:46 +0000

As a dedicated listener and runner, the only thing i would love is to have WBUR play in the background. I like all content, so simple streaming in the background would be perfect. Thanks for the great content!

By: Mark Kriegsman

Mark Kriegsman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:45:28 +0000

Ideas, ideas, ideas:

* Ability to DONATE to WBUR from inside the app, even if that just means an embedded browser that takes you to a special ‘mobile-friendly donation page’ on the regular wbug.org site. In-app purchases, while easier, have the whole 70/30 split problem (Apple take 30%)

** Let people who have recently donated listen to the national feed WITHOUT INTERRUPTION during fundraisers!!

* Pause and Rewind the live stream! (Buffer up X minutes of audio and allow pause, rewind, and ‘return to live’ functions) Help us out with the driveway moments when we have to get out of the car anyway

- Record and save live audio stories (And share them)

* Optional screen display that show useful ‘ambient’ information like time, temperature, weather forecast, webcam view from the BU Marsh Plaza ‘alumni webcam’, etc., so people can put dock their phone and use the WBUR app as their standard ‘display’ app

* Alarm clock function: Wake to WBUR at a preset time (optionally different each day of the week?) A LOT of people who do this already anyway, but with a radio.

- Push notifications of breaking news (CNN has a lousy idea of what counts as push-worthy news notifications… seriously:Tiger Woods?)

- Push notifications that your favorite show is about to start in X minutes, with a button to launch the app and start listening

- Ability to make custom podcast/playlists (a la Stitcher) so you could, for example, listen to the hourly news summary, then the most recent On Point, then the most recent Diana Rehm Show.

** Ability to listen to WBUR in the background! This IS possible (ish), even with the current iPhone OS, but opening a Safari page with an auto-play embedded quicktime stream. Safari will keep playing an MP3 audio stream even when you exit and go back to the home screen. The Wunderground Radio app does a good job of doing this. (Go to http://tinyurl.com/wburiphone from an iPhone to see.)

- Photos and bios of the hosts of the current show, to put a face to the voices we know so well

- Ability to cross-reference stories by tag or host, ie, Cokie Roberts coverage of the Supreme Court

WE LOVE WBUR – Can’t wait to see all the things a WBUR app can do! And FWIW, I’m a developer and would love to help out in any way, including testing.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:56:22 +0000

Don’t forget about the iTouch! Would love to load (or automatically load) stories from the morning onto my ipod so I can read them on the subway or throughout the day without internet access.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:10:47 +0000

Can you please work with a developer that embraces the open source free world and develop an app that will also work on the Android phone operating system.