4.10. Stream Web Audio and Video

When the iPad was announced, there was much grumbling about the fact that it wouldn’t play files in the Adobe Flash format—which is a large portion of the videos out there on the Web, as well as the code behind of many browser-based videogames. In fact, some people thought the lack of Flash would be a crippling blow to the iPad’s chances of success.

But guess what? A lot of people bought the iPad anyway. Sure, it doesn’t recognize Flash, RealPlayer, or Windows Media file formats. But the iPad isn’t utterly clueless about streaming online goodies. After all, it has that whole YouTube app (Section 6.5) that plays plenty of videos. It can also play some QuickTime movies, like movie trailers, as long as they’ve been encoded (prepared) in certain formats (like H.264). It can also play MP3 and WAV audio files right off the Web. Here are a few sites to sample:

• BBC News. The Beeb’s podcasts stream nicely and you can search shows by radio station, genre, or get an A to Zed list; the company also has a fine iPad app mentioned in Chapter 8. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/

• "Meet the Press” audio stream. You can find an MP3 edition of the venerable Sunday-morning talk show here: http://podcast.msnbc.com/audio/podcast/MSNBC-MTP.xml

• National Public Radio. NPR has many of its signature programs, like “All Things Considered” and “World Café,” plus “Morning Edition” and its other newscasts, online and ready to stream through your iPad’s speaker at m.npr.org. (NPR also has a news-focused iPad app in the App Store, too.)

• New York Times podcasts. Check out a whole page of different news shows that start streaming when you tap the MP3 link. www.nytimes.com/podcasts

Actually, any old MP3 file plays fine right in Safari. If you already played through your 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes of music synced from your computer, you can always do a web search for free mp3 music.

As for video, you have more to watch on the Web than just ‘Pad-friendly streaming videos at Home→YouTube. Apple, in addition to making iPods and Macs, hosts a huge collection of movie trailers on its site at trailers.apple.com. Tap a movie poster to get started.