I am a news junkie. I love MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and NPR. I just don’t sit in front of a TV all day. I have been hunting for a good source for streaming news so I can keep up on things audibly rather than relying on the news channel RSS feeds. Don’t get me wrong, I love my RSS, it is just that I would like to listen to news while I am working on something else; a TV is not always in the room where I am working. MSNBC offers a stream through Windows Media Player, but there is a problem with it. It repeats the same thing, even the commercials, every 15 minutes or so. I want something like CNN/Headline news to stream constant updates to me.

Maybe my issue is that I’m using the wrong players. I have tried Windows Media Player and Apple’s iTunes. Nether of these offer me what I am looking for. Has anyone else found any good streaming news sources? What players do you use? I would try Real, but have gotten disgusted at the amount of overhead that it offers. Not only that, but its free player does not offer some very basic features that I feel it should. I want a player that I can minimize to my taskbar with controls. Media Player and iTunes both offer this. With Real, you need to pay to get this feature. It’s ridiculous. Give me equivalent features on your free player as all of your competing products out there and I will give you a shot. Until then, consider yourself on the back burner. If anyone knows of any good media players or news sources, let me know.

[Michael Merry]