npr

Microsoft representatives appearing on National Public Radio's "Science Friday" today said that the company's Kinect motion-controller was left open by "design," despite earlier comments by the company that it did not "condone" Kinect's hacking.

A tweet by the "Science Friday" staff read "(Xbox director of incubation) Alex Kipman says Kinect interface was left unprotected 'by design.' [And Microsoft's] Shannon Loftis says she's 'inspired' by community finding new uses."

But earlier this month, in response to a $3,000 challenge by the open-source hardware outfit Adafruit … Read more

A new national study has found that one in five adolescents now suffers some sort of hearing impairment, according to a report Tuesday on NPR's All Things Considered program. That's a scary statistic.

In the August 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed federal data collected from national yearly surveys of the health of American citizens. The conclusion is chilling: "The prevalence of hearing loss among a sample of U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was greater in 2005-2006 compared with … Read more

Editors' take: The NPR app for the iPad smartly organizes the day's news and topics into a magazine style format, where you can either read through stories or click on the speaker icon to listen to that particular segment. You can also listen to the entire taping of recent show episodes.

National Public Radio, which produces popular programs such as "All Things Considered," "Talk of the Nation," and "JazzSet," was an early adopter of Web technology, making its content available through a standards-based API, or application programming interface.

APIs are at the heart of many cloud services that provide for two-way, or read-write, communication such as Twitter or Salesforce.com.

A firehose of content (meaning read-only) is all well and good, but having the ability to integrate and tweak content into new forms makes it much more interesting.

Earlier this year, NPR announced API Ingest, … Read more

This American Life lets you listen to episodes from the popular public radio show going all the way back to the show's launch in 1995. The first screen lets you select from the radio show archive; TV shows shown originally on Showtime; a favorites section so you can save ones you like; or you can listen to episodes based on popular contributors. The app also has buttons across the bottom to find the latest shows (new shows are automatically downloaded to the app), a listing of all shows, a section for live streams, and a link to the blog. … Read more

Natali Del Conte replaces Justin Yu on today's show, as he's out looking for pickles. The name of today's show refers to the news that William Shatner of "Star Trek" fame will star in CBS' new sitcom "S**t My Dad Says," based on the same expletive-filled Twitter phenomenon. We think Jerry Stiller would make a better cranky old man. (By the way, CBS, you own a equally funny podcast/show/Twitter called The 404, available on @the404.)

Jeff has a beef with the number of 3D movie theaters out there right now. Apparently, the success of "Avatar" has led a swarm of 3D films to be released, and many theaters aren't equipped to handle the 3D projections just yet.

Next, we get to Sony building a universal game controller (a la the Logitech Harmony One, but for videogame consoles). We're not exactly sure how they plan on doing this, or whether it's useful in any way. We do, however, reminisce a bit about our favorite game controllers. The original Sega Saturn controller is Wilson's favorite for 2D games. "It melts in your hands," he says.

Finally, we get to some voice mails, and the racist polar bear on Xbox Live has really taken off as a meme now. We're encouraging our fans to send in their renditions of this meme. The best ones we will showcase on the show. Maybe a few Photoshoped images? Maybe a few voice mails as the racist polar bear? Send them in to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com or call us at 1-866-404-CNET (2638).

… Read more

If you follow National Public Radio News on your Android phone, head into the Market to update the latest version. Why? Two words: live streaming.

Starting Tuesday, NPR News 1.2 became available in the Android Market, and it opens the app up to a feature that had been sorely missing--the capability to stream a show live. You can also stream shows on-demand. That means no more waiting for the show to finish before playing it on-demand, or trying to access the show from NPR.com.

The number of live streams available at a given moment shows up as a … Read more

Fans of radio shows like "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" will be happy to learn that NPR Digital Media released its first application for Android devices. In addition to the above shows, NPR News offers many of the network's popular programs. You can download NPR News from the Android Market for free today.

I've already logged considerable time playing with NPR News over the last day or so and have found it to a welcome addition to my handset. The app has a very simple and intuitive interface that makes learning a breeze. … Read more

iPhones may not have FM tuners built in, but they can do a damn fine impression of a radio. In fact, where public radio is concerned, an iPhone is even better than the real thing.

Apps like NPR News and Public Radio Player 2.0, for example, let you tune into live streams from hundreds of stations and listen to your favorite shows on-demand.

Now comes Public Radio App, which raises the bar even higher with features like pause/rewind, a show-schedule timeline for the current stream(s), and an alarm clock that lets you wake up to your favorite … Read more