Network

 
Published: Saturday 31 October 1998

Radio revived
Why limit your radio listening to national and local stations when there is a whole world of radio on the Internet? Thousands of radio stations around the world broadcast live to anyone with a fast connection to the Internet and the software to receive streaming audio. Some low-budget stations have even switched off their power-hungry transmitters and now broadcast solely on the Net.

You can get a copy of the most widely used receiver software, RealAudio, from http://www.real. com/. This miniature Web browser is preloaded with suggested listening sites. Microsoft has its own streaming software package at http://www. microsoft.con/windows/mediaplay-er/download/default.asp.

Net harmonics
A great place to start looking for radio stations is http://www.albany.net/ ~xanadu/radio.html which links to live broadcasts from several hundred radio stations - sit back and listen to Budapest's Danubius Radio at http:// www.datanet.hu/cgi-bin/datanet/ ram/danubius.ra. For news addicts, the BBC World Service is at http:// www.audionet.coni/bbc and CNN is at http://cnn.com/audioselect.

Unhealthy Wet
From harmonies on the Net to the how the Net affects our health. A two-year study by researchers at Carnegis Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, concludes that surfing the Net can cause a slow decline in mental health. Social psychologist Robert Kraut says Internet use results in isolation, loneliness and depression - check out the details at http://whatsnew.andrew. cmu.edu/ Computerslnformation.qry ?record=33011. Although the Net users in the study "talked" in chat rooms, exchanged e-mails and kept in touch electronically, they spent less time talking to friends and family, and suffered from the effects of decreased social interaction. You might" recall how similar things were said about computer gamers in the 1980s.

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