Today is Election Day. You know the rest.

The unit
BY PAUL MALONEY
One device-based approach in the move to make Internet radio "more radio and less Internet" is the Kerbango stand-alone Internet radio tuner. The machine probably won't be available until after the holidays (but before your PlayStation 2 shows up), though Amazon.com claims early reserved quantities may be available .

Kerbango, owned by 3Com, is banking on the idea that Internet radio would be great if it didn't have anything to do with computers. Or at least the end-user's computer.

For about $300 US, you can have one of these blue bundles of joy sitting on your nightstand on January 9, pulling in streaming audio from all corners of the world. And you'll never have to install, uninstall, configure, reboot, or worry about what that "Scroll Lock" key is all about.

Connect the Kerbango to your broadband (and only broadband -- no time for modem Neanderthals!) hookup, and the device operates nearly exactly like the website interface. Use the tuning knob to select an audio category (musical genre, or nonmusical topic like Weather or Comedy). Then choose from the available stations within the category.

The Kerbango's audio options update automatically by communicating with the Kerbango Tuning System, or KTS, which is company's elaborate database of station information. As the Internet industry and number of streaming options grow, so will your choices with the Kerbango.

You can connect the unit to your home stereo. And if you're feeling "old school," it has an AM/FM tuner built in.

Unfortunately, since the unit is not yet available, we at the RAIN test labs weren't able to actually take it out back on the dirt track. The purchase page at Amazon offered some spec's, but we're a little confused. F'rinstance:

-- The technical data indicates that Real G2, streaming MP3, and WindowsMedia formats are not supported, yet elsewhere the software is said to "include support for Real G2, 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, and MP3 codecs." Still no WindowsMedia (and there are a lot of streaming sources using only the Microsoft technology), but what's the story on the G2 and MP3? --The same Amazon tech page answers "NO" to the item "Audible content playback." Hmmm. Does it juice oranges then?

One possible drawback of course is being limited to only those content providers who choose to stream in RealAudio (interestingly enough, the website supports WindowsMedia). It's also kind of disheartening to learn that if you already have your computer on your broadband connection, you'll probably have to plunk down an extra $80-150 for a router.

To get a feel of how the Kerbango player works, the Kerbango site (here) is a good emulation (and a very nice general guide to Internet radio!).
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The site
BY RALPH SLEDGE
Initially, the site looks tastefully done. It's color-coded with the same greens and blues as the Kerbango player, and generally maintains a similar sense of style.

The heart of the site is a very large database of seemingly every radio site that Kerbango could find. Any and every site that streams and can be called a radio station, playing anything from Hawaiian slack-key music to technology and stock reports, is listed here.

This database is directly accessible through the front page, initially divided up into categories such as music, news, talk, etc. From there, you can drill down to narrow the selection to precisely the kind of station you want to hear (choosing International music, then filtering by region, etc.). You can then re-sort results by just about any parameter.

Each entry will tell you at a glance a fair amount of information about the site. The site's name, the station's call letters, and regional information are all present. Also prominent is a rating called "signal strength" which rates the station not only on the bandwidth (stream quality) that it offers, but also on its tested ability to deliver that stream. A short overview of the site is featured beneath this information.

None of the content in the site is particularly editorial, but on the front page they do offer a "Special Feature" section, which features a site that has been "Identified by Kerbango as exceptionally cool." This featured site changes each time the page is loaded, and the selections are varied, so it seems likely that any given user will find at least one of the sites of interest.

To the right of that is a longer list of "cool streams" that covers a wider base of stations and tastes, listing such stations as KPIG and CNN World News.

The site has a few other interesting features, such as the ability to save "presets" -- buttons that are listed across the top of the Kerbango pages that can store a users' favorite stations. Kerbango has also developed a nice help area to assist users in obtaining and installing the various audio players necessary for Internet radio.

In general, the Kerbango site looks good and behaves solidly. The site even worked well on nonstandard browsers (i.e. ones other than Netscape or Internet Explorer). The only real flaw I could find is that some of the links are in very small typeface, and, being colored in the same green as the rest of the site, aren't immediately obvious. This is a pretty minor flaw, however, and I would have to say that the Kerbango site does what it does very well.

Simply click the headline at left to bring up a convenient pop-up form!

From Business Wire: "Avenue A, Inc., a digital marketing optimization company, and RealNetworks, today announced the results of RealNetworks' latest streaming ad campaign...

"The goal of the one-month campaign was to drive traffic to the Real.com web site and encourage downloads of the latest RealPlayer software. RealNetworks created the streaming media ads, while Avenue A leveraged its Atlas Digital Marketing Technology Suite to deliver, track and optimize results.

"This campaign achieved an average CTR of 5.6%, over 13 times greater than the 0.42% industry average for banner ads.

"While such click-through results are excellent, they're not nearly as compelling as the conversion rates, the rates at which people perform a desirable action such as a sale or registration. The average conversion rate from this streaming campaign, a download of RealPlayer software, was over five times higher than RealNetworks' conversion rate from previous banner ad campaigns...

"In branding studies conducted over the last year by Millward Brown Interactive, a leading brand research company, consumers exposed to a streaming media ad are five times more aware of the advertiser's ad and were also 38 times more aware of the advertisers brand compared to banner advertisements..."

Read the press release here.

Kurt Hanson is working from the Strategic Media Research offices today. To reach him, please call 312 726-8300 x. 4401, or e-mail him here.

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From InternetNews.com: "According to a new Neilsen report, rich-media Web content consumption by hour and even by day varies greatly enough that the term "prime time" may be needed soon for the online space as patterns in streaming consumption continue to evolve."

Here are some results of the study:

-- "Nearly 33 million individuals surfing from home and about 17 million surfing from work accessed some form of rich-media content in September 2000... -- "Friday turns out to be the biggest day for streaming consumption in the workplace... -- "Saturday is the key day for at-home streaming consumption: 43 percent of all those who stream accessed rich media at home on Saturday. This result is interesting because Saturday is usually considered a low point for television viewership... -- "At-work streaming consumption peaks between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m... -- "Prime time for streaming consumption at home is the evening hours. The hours when the largest percentage of the streaming population is active are between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m..."

Read this story here.

November 5-7	NAB European Radio Conference, Berlin
November 12-14	Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) "Broadcasting 2000: On-air / On-line," Calgary
Nov. 28-Dec. 1	Radio Ink Internet Conference, Santa Clara, CA, featuring a brand-new national study on Internet radio usage presented by Eric Rhoads & Kurt Hanson
February 1-4, 2001	RAB 2001. Details coming soon.