A TiVo for Your Tunes

Photograph by Michael Kraus Photograph by Michael Kraus

Imagine a personal radio recorder. It would automatically record your favorite talk shows, play tracks by your favorite musicians, recommend artists that might interest you, and let you rate content so you don't have to suffer through the thousandth airing of that %&#*! Justin Timberlake song. Combine that power with the giant trove of content available on Sirius or XM satellite radio (100 channels apiece) and you'd have one cool product. Too bad it doesn't exist. Pogo's Radio Your Way, however, is a baby step in the right direction.



This pocket-size AM/FM radio lets you record off the air either with the push of a button or on a scheduled basis (as long as you're prepared to read the documentation; Pogo's user interface needs work). Pogo also functions as an MP3 player, and although its onboard memory is puzzlingly paltry (32MB), the unit has an SD card slot that can give you up to a gigabyte of breathing room.
If you run out of space but don't want to lose anything, you
can upload radio or voice recordings to your home PC.



In the not-too-distant future, we may see a few more smart radios on the market. Gotuit Audio is working on a car-based unit, and a pocket-size TiVo-style satellite radio may not be too far behind. Sirius Satellite Radio reportedly has something along those lines in the works for later this year.