Slacker

I have been mildly obsessed with Slacker since I read about it in the now defunct Business 2.0 a few years ago. The idea of a radio that is fully customizable is highly intriguing to me - while I have a huge itunes music collection and several ipods, I am tired of the music I own, and highly enjoy discovering new music. The radio has always been the typical place you discover new artists, but traditional radio doesn't suit me anymore - my musical tastes are more refined and eclectic these days, and - let's be honest - I could do without the 5 minutes of commercial stop blocks. So when Slacker introduced their radio device that constantly downloaded new music from the web when in a "hot spot", I knew I would be an early adopter.

A good amount of time passed and the devices hadn't come to market yet, and I started getting into Pandora and some of the other online music services. However, when I finally received my Slacker radio, I was a believer. I had access to tons of new music on one device without having to download, create playlists and pay for it. It was just there. And because of the caching mechanism, you could listen to Slacker on subways and in other "non-connected" places.

But a few days ago, I had the real aha moment. The new Slacker app for the Blackberry was released and I downloaded it onto my Curve. While I was expecting some glitches, and wasn't sure if I was going to be able to use my phone, email, calendar and web apps while listening to music, I was wrong. The experience was great, and I am down to one device for all of my mobile needs. I am in heaven.

However, it begs the question, do you ever need a customized device specifically for music? Probably not. The iPod is very cool, but the Curve gives me the best of all worlds right now with the least amount of compromises (iPhone and Storm are non-starters because of the lack of keyboards). And what about all the resources that went into the development of those nifty Slacker G2 devices? In a perfect world, I would like a Curve that has a full screen on the back for web navigation, but until then, with my Slacker app, I am good to go.