Description of iRadio

The original idea for iRadio was outputted by our group already in the first lecture. We will now elaborate on the different chapters the defining frames on which the now-ready application was programmed.

Initial idea
Imagine a city/boy travelling by his car to a party located near Kapa-Kohila. The moment he reaches the outer limits of his favorite radio-station Uuno Raadio, he starts receiving annoying static from his radio. He now wishes to continue to listen to Uuno Raadio, but is unable to do it easily, as he doesn't know the frequency.

Our application is easily usable application, which will tell at that particular moment to the user, what is the new frequency for his favorite station.

Also - if the radio station doesn't reach to his new location, the application will offer a list all the stations available nearby. Also the user has an option to only see alike-stations (a Uuno Raadio fan would then see a Sky Plus frequency for example).

The development of the Idea
Our idea was then put to work, programmed mainly for the main-stream smartphone iPhone. We wanted to write the script very universally, meaning a large scale use of standard-base innovative scripting languages. To us it meant HTML5 and CSS3. As it later was revealed, these languages offer superb simplicity and usability regarding our goals.

Although the project was written keeping in mind the needs of the user of iPhone, our wish is to in the future to offer this platform as a browser-based solution (working as intended in Opera Mini for example).

The current state of the Idea
At this moment our project is quite ready, especially when thinking that it is still a prototype. The main functionality has been catered by our app and future developments of our project can be easily done. To point out specific subjects that need to be developed, we will list them now:

• the creation of a automated database of available station frequencies - currently we have to add and update the database of available radio stations manually, but it should be automated. In our view, when the program reaches a wider spectre of masses, a community-updated database could be used. This will also make the application more supra-national, meaning it can be easily used outside Estonia
• the programming of a alternative browsing possibility - currently a novice user may find our app somewhat difficult to use. One way to make it even more easier is to create an alternative map view, where the user only sees his or her location on the map. When she or he clicks on the icon (symbolizing himself), a diagram will be showed to him. Then he can easily select a colored sector from the diagram (circle-diagram), with each sector being a shortcut to a specific type of music-station (eg. Russian, dance, folk, Christian and alternative music-playing radio stations).