Wunder Radio: A paradigm shift in your pocket.

I may be unique in this day and age, but I enjoy coming home from work and turning on the radio. I am NOT a fan of modern television, so I would rather sit and listen to albums or watch documentaries on Netflix via my Xbox 360.

But my real joy comes from listening to the radio.

That's why I am very excited about Wunder Radio, a new app that was brought to my attention by Mr. Jamie "Mr. Pence" Pence, a co-reviewer on TapCritic.com. The app is extremely simple: first, it determines your location via the iPhone's built in GPS (I'm assuming that it uses the wireless network map to determine your location on the iPod). It then brings up a huge list of station categories.

[Video Review by Mr. Pence]

First among them is the NWS Weather Radio for your area and all areas across the country. That's followed by your local radio stations' internet streams. Then, you can browse all stations, WORLD WIDE, by various categories like Sports, Talk, and Music. You can even browse individual nations around the world. You can sit in your living room, car, train ride, what have you, and listen to a radio station half a world away.

The stream quality is amazing, even over Edge.

The commercial-band radio streams are followed by various scanners, including local Police, Rescue, and Fire systems as well as the railroad channels for your (or any) area. You can bookmark favorites, which is handy with such a gigantic offering of channels.

Another awesome feature is that, when you've "tuned in" a stream, you can browse through other channels and maintain that feed, allowing you to find a badass techno station in Germany while listening to an All Rock station from London.

Within the "Now Playing" section of the app, you can view similar stations, adjust volume and stop and start the feed. Many stations offer multiple feeds at multiple bitrates and you can easily switch between these feeds. In a metro area, you'll have 3G service and can download super fast. At home, you can use your blazing broadband. And, when all else fails, you can switch to an "Edge Network" compatible stream. Essentially, you'd have to be in a part of the country that has NO Edge Data Network service before this app wasn't immediately useful. [Like by basement apartment -.ed]

Check out the listings for Berlin. Crazy.

The high bitrate streams are CD quality, and even the low bitrate streams are tolerable, sounding like a fuzzy-ish terrestrial station. It's a pretty amazing experience listening to radio from Bosnia at CD quality.

So here's the long and the short of it: for $4.99, you can download an application to your IPOD or your CELL PHONE that turns it into something that is 1000x more versatile than a pocket radio. You may not be able to tune it your preferred local station, but if you're into music, into talk, and into sports, then you will appreciate being able to listen to a Rugby match call from Australia. Or what people think about the day's news in Ireland. Or what's getting airplay at a college station in the Scotland. Or local scanner bands, or even weather radio.

This is a real winner of an app. You can buy WunderRadio HERE.