iPhone Life magazine

Streaming Democracy

John Painter 3.6.10


What do you do if you’re a person who likes to keep up with news but the source of the broadcasts is Windows Media Player?

This is all too common a situation for people like me who like to follow what is happening in their state Legislature, in my case Maine. Take my situation; working in health care, I like to keep up with what is happing, particularly with Bills being debated in Health and Human Services and Appropriations.  Many states which broadcast their Legislatures use WMP which creates an unintended barrier for iPhone users since the iPhone won’t stream .wma or .wmv files.  Or can it?

I want to share with our readers a couple of work arounds, the first described in my colleague Werner’s blog. I’ve been using Streamer (Free) myself because it has video and it is indeed very good, albeit with more bells and whistles than I need. The video is a bit jerkey too.

The other option is FStream (Free) and can have you up and running those pesky .asx streams. The set up is  fairlyeasy, though be prepared to do a little digging to get the correct URL, if you have Safari, you'll need to go to View then down to View Source and look for the media player and file.  If you have Firefox you’ll be able to right click (press Control then click) on the Media Player, open Properties and you’ll see the URL.  

Of course if the web administrators just posted that URL under the player for everyone who doesn’t use WMP - that would open up Democracy a bit more.

I would encourage you to do your part and point out to web administrators for state or local governments that their broadcasts would reach more citizens if the URLs for audio and video broadcasts were posted. Now it is entirely possible, there’s a simpler way to do all this, if so give a shout and post your workflow. I love to hear from readers!

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John Painter
http://www.johnlpainter.com

I'm a behavioral health professional living and working in Maine specializing in psychiatric rehabilitation. For years I've utilized mobile technology to improve the delivery of community based mental health services, and embraced the iPhone when it came out in 2007.

I am also a doctoral candidate at Franklin Pierce University where I have been researching the role of the Liberal Arts in American higher education.

I write as a guest for iPhone Life periodically with a special interest in helping other professionals (healthcare, education and government in particular) incorporate iOS devices into their work, and several years ago introduced the first iPhone and eventually iPad classes at Lewiston Adult Education in Lewiston Maine http://laeipad.blogspot.com/ concentrating on helping other professionals interested in using and incorporating iPads into their work.

Old Comments

Fstream

Submitted by troy on 7/29/10 11:20am

found a recommendation for this app in iphonelife magazine and bought it. $8. Fstream rarely works. Either i've done something wrong to the app or you are utterly discredited by recommending it. embarrassing if this is your career.

Fstream

Submitted by troy on 7/29/10 11:20am

found a recommendation for this app in iphonelife magazine and bought it. $8. Fstream rarely works. Either i've done something wrong to the app or you are utterly discredited by recommending it. embarrassing if this is your career.

Sorry to hear of your

Submitted by John Painter on 7/30/10 5:38am
Sorry to hear of your troubles with FStream, it has worked very well for me. I use it to listen to audio broadcast codecs which I can not listen to natively with the iPhone, for example Maine broadcasts it's Legislative hearings and debates (this is what I use it for primarily) using .wma and .asx radio and I have never had a problem using FStream. You do have to remember to use the "stream URL" and not the regular website URL this often requires using your computer / browser and looking at the html code of the particular broadcaster you're interested in and locate, then copy/paste the stream URL into FStream. That is usually the thing most people stumble with, but there are other settings you might need to adjust depending the particular codec of the stream you want to listen to. Also, most writers (myself included) are not professional writers, we are not paid or reimbursed for anything we write, we are hobbyists - avid users of technology. By profession I happen to work in public health, which is why I need to keep up to date with public policy and have used FStream to monitor public hearings when I can not attend. I think whenever an app is not working the way you expect, it is a good idea to contact the developer and request some support, most are reasonable about doing that. Good luck.

Possibly my favourite

Submitted by BB on 11/25/10 3:27pm

Possibly my favourite application. Have been using for 3 months & never had any problems. Found pretty easy to get working as well. I was so happy I actually made a donation for software for the 1st time ever.

Not keen on sounding like am trying to be the author's best friend, but just felt that readers of these comments needed to know that the poster "Troy" can't speak for the masses.