´óÏó´«Ã½

I have to be careful what I say in case I accidentally spoil the Christmas surprise for a colleague's spouse. Let me put in this way: a number of people having been asking my advice about wifi internet radios. I can bore for Scotland on this subject but it's at this time of year, when people are looking for ideas for Christmas presents, that they actually seek me out and threaten to pick what's left of my brains.

Sadly I'm not on commission from any single manufacturer, but I do think these radios are brilliant. The new models combine wifi internet reception with FM and DAB and the high-end sets even have USB slots for memory cards and so on.

If you have a broadband router or hub then they're portable around the house and garden, but some sets do need to be plugged into the mains and the others soak up a lot of battery power. And they're still fairly pricey...a colleague who ordered one from an online retailer paid just over a hundred pounds and that was a good deal.

Now you may well be wondering why I, of all people, would recommend anyone buys a radio that offers listeners the choice of thousands of different stations from around the world. Well, I don't have a logical answer to that other than to 'fess up that I'm a radio enthusiast to the core. Also, as I've said before, these internet radios work very well with the range of services offered by ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio stations. You can listen to the live streams, find particular programmes via the on-demand service and even browse ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio podcasts too.

And only with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland can you listen to five alternative streams of programmes - our famous Zones - grouped into genres to suit different tastes. We are, in fact, reorganising those Zones in early January...creating a new Conversation Zone and Culture Zone. If you go to our Zones page you'll find the URL details of each Zone because some internet sets require you to key that in.

But if, after all that, you're not convinced then socks and scarves are good too.

Merry Christmas.

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