PC shortwave radio powered by Linux
Caitlyn Martin of O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter blog, today writes about the Ten Tec RX-320D, a shortwave radio receiver controlled via your PC. The default software runs on Windows, but there's also a Linux package that Martin herself helps maintain for both Ubuntu and Vector Linux:
Why a PC radio? First, I can maintain a nice database with the rx320 software that lets me go directly to a large variety of broadcasts with frequencies and times, all recorded based on my experience of what I can receive clearly at my location. I just right click on the virtual radio on my screen, click frequency database in the menu, choose my station listing, and pick what I want. There’s no meaningful limit on the number of stations I can record information about. Much like a spreadsheet I can sort my stations anyway that’s convenient at the moment with a click or two on a column header.
Part of my geekiness is that I've done a bit of shortwave listening over the years (I sold my Sony ICF-2010 radio on eBay last year -- the money was too good), and I'm also a licensed, yet inactive amateur radio operator -- call letters KC6FYL -- unless my ticket has expired. I can tell you that at $349, this Ten-Tec radio it is quite a bargain, even though it looks like a plain black box -- the power is in your PC, and it's better to have a PC controlling your radio than a bunch of knobs, switches and onboard computer components that can fail.
And TenTec is an American company that makes this stuff in the Great Smoky Mountains
Also on the O'Reilly Linux blog: Julia Kemp talks briefly about sound problems in Debian. Yep, I've had them too, and one of her suggestions has worked very well for me: running alsamixer at the command line and PUMPING UP THE VOLUME. Works every time.