From cNet News: "Google is allowing some of its existing online marketers to use its automated advertising system to broadcast ads on radio  stations around the United States, the company said on Thursday...

"The test is limited to just over 20 Google AdWords customers and more than 730 stations, including XM Satellite radio, said Ryan Steelberg, head of radio operations for Google and a co-founder of dMarc...

"The radio ads are running in more than 260 metropolitan markets, covering about 87 % of the country, he said...

"AdWords customers selected to participate in the beta will see a new 'audio ads' tag when they log into the AdWords system. Similar to the AdWords auction-based system for online ads, advertisers can bid on air spots and target their ads by geography, station type, listener demographics and time of day.

"The system allows advertisers to see real-time reports on the ads and change settings, like geographical target or time of day, as  well as hear the ad after it has played.

"Typically, the more targeted an ad campaign the higher the rates, according to Steelberg.

Read the entire article at cNet News.

From the press release: "At CES 2007, Cambridge Consultants will launch a platform design which rewrites the economics of the emerging  internet radio market... [T]he Iona Wi-Fi portable radio can be built with an electronic bill-of-materials (eBOM) costing less than $15.

"This incredibly small figure could lead to consumer products retailing for around $50 to $60 — which is under half of most of today's internet-ready 'kitchen radio' type products. Designed to operate without a PC, the Iona radio technology is as accessible and easy to use as today's portable FM radios.

"Our design ethos has focused on stripping the BOM to the absolute minimum, and optimizing power consumption,' says Cambridge Consultants' head of consumer products, Duncan Smith. 'As a result, we believe this platform could stimulate a new category of consumer electronics product, or act as a cost-effective add-on for established product lines such as DAB and satellite radios or MP3 players, or even a product associated with a brand such as a broadband service provider.'...

"The platform is capable of supporting RTP, HTTP, RDT and MMS for instance, plus MP3, WMA, AAC, AIFF and WAV data formats, and SNTP clock functionality."

Read the entire press release here.

From MS Mobiles.com: "...Recently Sirius extended its offering of radio channels available over Internet... and made it possible to purchase subscriptions also for people outside of USA.

"However Sirius is not providing playback possibility in mobile devices - just in personal computers - therefore 3rd party solution is needed to enable Sirius Internet radio streaming. For Windows Mobile SiriusCE was such a solution but now version 2 of this excellent program has been released and it brings much more improvements.

"SiriuCE 2 is a complete rewrite of SiriuCE to take advantage of the .Net 2.0 compact framework.

"SiriuCE 2 supports both WM5 smartphones and any other device that the .Net 2.0 CF will install on. Several other new features are the display of channel images, custom skinability (support for landscape, vga, smartphone, etc.), favorites, listening history, media player control, etc. SiriuCE 2 is still the same old  'use at your own risk' deal, and it's free for download...

"This program requires .Net 2.0 and SqlCE 3.0, both of which can be downloaded in the full installer.

Read the entire story at MS Mobiles.