I think icebergradio.com sucks!
IcebergRadio’s OS X support is terrible!
They are resistant to having their service heard on the widest possible range of platforms. This is
ridiculous. It’s like a tv station wanting to be solely watched on Sony television sets, and assuring it stay that way. You’d be out of luck if you had a Toshiba or any other brand tv!! The music was great, but their disregard for maximum interoperability is atrocious, meaning they’ve consistently shown they do not care about having their music heard by Mac users. I don’t have memories of getting it to work on Gnu-Linux, either.
This resistance doesn’t surprise me as they cancelled a punk show I enjoyed, presumably for pushing the envelop. Among the many things these DJs did was to make it known that 2kool4radio.com and icebergradio.com were based out of Ontario, at a time when 2kool4radio.com seemed obsessed with keeping this a secret. Perhaps, they were trying to avoid being pigeon-holed a Canadian thing, while trying to target a global audience.
Today, they garner users with another on-line player that doesn’t
work on FF, Flock, or Safari. I’m presently using OS X, Tiger. The most the player works is with Safari,
where the intro commercial plays with video and audio, then zip –nada!!
Somebody in charge of making their service available to the maximum
amount of users should have been fired long ago.
Let me take this opportunity to tell you once more, “Fix your
software you lousy service providers. I’ve been telling you this for
years!”. Icebergradio.com sucks!! Of course, I’m referring to their lack of interoperability, not their content.
Maurice Cepeda
Update, August 28, 08
I can hardly believe this, but on a whim –and out of boredom– I tried icebergradio at <http://new.icebergradio.com/>. Long and behold … I got audio, although the controls on Flock 2.0b2 beta (and therefore probably Firefox 3) were hardly usable –rendering bars where the controls should be. The pop-up player works, though. Safari Version 3.1.2 works perfectly, in-frame and pop-up.
I hope they get Flock and Firefox on OS X support fully working soon! (Hint to icebergradio webmasters: test features on OS X.) Sadly, full Firefox support might not happen because their technological player improvements finished on Monday August 11, 08, as per <http://new.icebergradio.com/iceberg_comingsoon.html. As of Feb. 09, 09, Flock 2.0.2 (on OS X) support is non-existant.
Just the same, this is impressive because icebergradio hasn’t been usable on OS X for years!! I asked myself, “Do icebergradio admin read my articles?”. I don’t know, but I do know there was a google search for “iceberg radio sucks” that lead to a hit. I guess complaining publicly might actually work. And I thought I was being self-indulgent with this article.
Update, July 21, 08:
I just realized that at some point, Shoutcast.com started “rebroadcasting” icebergradio.com feeds. I noticed this while going through my shoutcast feeds on VLC. To list all related feeds, just do a search for icebergradio. Only 40 show up, though, and none of the speciality shows –so it’s still a walled garden scenario. These “easily accessable” feeds are only for promotional use, as a female voice stipulates at the start of each feed –something to the effect of– “For all the goodies, sign up at icebergradio.com”. Well, honey, I’d love to, but considering that they’ve blocked OS X users, I can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.
The other question that begs to be asked is one of convenience. How does one make a VLC playable playlist from all these icebergradio feeds? That might be the subject of another article.
Update Feburary 09, 09
As of Feb. 09, 09 Flock 2.0.2 support took a turn for the worse. It’s non-existent, but Safari works perfectly now. They’ve finished their reorganizing of their feeds, so if you have any .m3u or .pls playlists –the sort that VLC understands– done with the old feed links, you’re out of luck too. Assuming shoutcast is still “rebroadcasting” feeds, you could just hop on over there and make yourself a new playlist. Both <www.Icebergradio.com> and <http://new.icebergradio.com/> seem to link to the latest working player setup.
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Looks like they now caved in to AccuRadio.com.
I hopped on over to AccuRadio.com and sure enough, I can log on to their service easily. I don’t know if they have a members only feed service, but –certainly– publicly accessible feeds work flawlessly in Safari and Flock 2 on OS X.
I’m not hoping for iceberg’s demise, just a little consideration in the way of cross board accessibility, called interoperability.
I honestly can’t understand why any entrepreneur would want to place limits on their potential market. It’s not as if, I’m going to run off and buy a Windows based PC just to listen to iceberg, am I? Do they really expect this to happen? Then make it “listenable” from OS X, already!
I’m brought back to the discrimination US blacks suffered at the hands of businesses that didn’t service blacks. Can a business afford to not accept business from some people just because you don’t support or like their culture, colour, or in this case because of OS indifference? … and because some webmasters –payed to deliver content– fail to reach the widest audience due to their not supporting cross platform web standards? In this case, you’re only encouraging your business to look elsewhere.
In case anyone is wondering if I have a right to complain, I was a registered iceberg user at the start, and yes the service was accessible on OS X during the early onset.
I, too, was an avid fan of ‘iceberg’ on my Mac, and had some problems playing material with the ads and pop-ups. I do see that Accuradio bought them out. Sad in a way. But I’ve moved on – Radio Paradise, Deezer, etc. It was good while it lasted. They don’t need to ‘hide’ the fact that they’ve been gobbled up by the giant, though.
I’m told shoutcast isn’t rebroadcasting iceberg or 2kool4radio feeds anymore.
http://www.2kool4radio.com doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and I’m having trouble accessing http://new.icebergradio.com but http://icebergradio.com/ exists and still only works on Safari –but it does so well.