That's right, folks, it's a VCR for your radio that even claims to remove commercials. One truly neat function is that it takes an existing medium -- in this case, the 110 minute cassette tape -- and manages to use it in a different way -- here, use less tape per minute when capturing voice, which doesn't need the resources, say, your mix tape from 1988 does. There's also the added benefit that they've taken that ubiquitous medium and locked in your content with their player; you're not listening to something taped with their 1/4 speed setup if you're not using their recorder. Wonder how "encrypted" the content is, or if it would sound like Alvin on a normal recorder? I'm betting something fancier than the latter.

ESPN radio has been running some self-pimps recently billing its radio broadcast as somehow being especially high tech and that you should be listening so that you can get the news now! Of course the technology challenger is a newspaper, so the radio does make out pretty well. Along the tired line of code rusting, I'd just point out that even when a technology is "obviously surpassed", there are still some things that are easier to do through ingenious use of The Old Way. [I suppose the natural next step is a conversation about digital broadcast radio, but between that and HDTV (and, well, heck, DRM in general) I think we're looking at a pretty nasty scamming of US consumers.]