Thursday, January 13, 2011

Listening to WAY-FM in Asia by upgrading 1st iPod Touch to iOS 3


A few years back, my dad gave me an iPod Touch and it's one of those devices that never really got of any use. For one, I had a multitude of products that could play .mp3 songs, from my phones to my laptops. I really had no use for this tiny, sleek gadget. In fact, I gave it to my wife so she could play around with it.

Then the other night, I wanted to listen to my favorite Christian radio station, WAY-FM, which broadcasts from my hometown in Florida. I wanted to listen to it in the Philippines.

I knew the station had audio streaming online but I didn't want to turn on my PC. I also didn't want to use my cell phone. I simply wanted to hear it off the speakers like a "normal" radio station. Then it hit me, WAY-FM has an iPhone app!

After some research, I was able to find out that my tiny little 16GB iPod Touch (now my wife's), a first generation 620mhz device that has 128MB DRAM, can be upgraded to iOS 3 for a mere $4.99 on the iTunes Store. There's ways to do it for free but it's a bit of a hassle having to download the file manually.

I plunged on the five bucks installed iOS 3, and viola, I was able to install WAY-FM's streaming app for free. I plugged it in my wife's iPod home/speaker base and I was able to listen to the station as if I was in my home town.

Excellent. :-)

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