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Record shortwave radio as MP3s

The Grundig G4 is a $200 portable shortwave radio that will let you tune into broadcasts anywhere in the world and record them.

Matt Rosoff
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff.
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Matt Rosoff

California-based Eton makes a wide range of radio-related products, but it started off as the exclusive distributor of Grundig shortwave radios in the U.S., and shortwave is still at the company's heart.

Eton booth at CES
Eton: stylish booth, stylish devices. Matt Rosoff

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company is showing off the Grundig G4 World Recorder, which not only lets you listen to just about every kind of radio broadcast available (including shortwave from 3,000 to 29,999 KHz), but also lets you record those broadcasts to MP3 files. (There's also a built-in mic for voice recording.)

The device comes with 2GB of built-in flash memory, and has a slot for SD memory cards and a mini-USB port for transferring files back and forth from a PC. It's great way to archive radio information from around the world for use in any way you can imagine--and nothing quite says "international dance floor" like a sample of a news broadcast in Farsi. It'll be available in March for $200.