This is cool. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is offering CBC Radio 1 (like AM talk radio) and CBC Radio 2 (like FM music shows) feeds on the Internet in Ogg Vorbis format. What’s that?, you ask, and Why should I care? Ogg is an audio compression format, like MP3 but better quality, and it is completely free, open, and unpatented. This means developers of audio players (both hardware and software) do not need to pay royalties to be able to use this format. It also means you can listen to CBC Radio on older hardware or on machines not running Windows (like Linux and FreeBSD).
Many Internet radio feeds force their users to use proprietary formats like Real Audio or Windows Media, so it is refreshing to find that CBC is also offering Ogg Vorbis. And it sounds great. I’m listening right now, and the feed is 32 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo Ogg. Happy Listening!