After finally getting their entire music collection on one device, many digital music fans have discovered that there is simply too much choice. A smaller but still significant few will also have encountered the dreaded "shuffle loop", where, unsatisfied with the random tune your iPod has provided, you keep skipping tracks indefinitely until either you or your iPod dies of old age.

If you suffer from either (or indeed both) of these terrible afflictions, you may be interested in the Slacker Personal Radio – a device which has just become available in the U.S.



I'm a huge advocate of intelligent internet radio services like Pandora and Last.fm. These applications learn your music tastes over time in order to provide an effort-free stream of music containing both a mix of your favourite existing tunes and exciting new material. Last.FM is how I discover 75% of the new music I listen to. In fact my less technology–obsessed friends are convinced I'm on some kind of commission for encouraging new sign-ups, such is the fervour with which I evangelise about it's brilliance.

By the clever trick of caching the music on the device and updating it's contents each time you connect to wi-fi, the Slacker provides Last.fm style functionality on the move (it even has "love" and "ban" buttons). Early reviews are good, but I'm a little concerned that a whole new device is required for this kind of functionality. Perhaps if the iPod Touch or iPhone had a little more memory they could run this kind of software without the need for a whole new player. For this reason I'm putting the Slacker in the "stop–gap" category. Convergant devices aren't going to go away, but in the short-term it looks like good fun.