What's an NPR Radio Bookmark USB thumb-drive?

Ah, your timing is beautiful because my pal Annie just showed me her NPR radio bookmark, and while it's a slick gizmo, it is a bit puzzling to know how to use it and exactly what it is. I will tell you that if you don't listen to national public radio, you're right in seeing it as just a funky looking USB thumb drive.

But before I tell you what it can do, let's start at the beginning.

First off, a photo of the device itself:

As you can see, it's only a tiny bit larger than a regular USB drive, but what it does is pretty darn interesting: it lets you bookmark NPR audio programming as you're listening to it, and then when you plug the gizmo into your computer, it automatically grabs the full program that you bookmarked, letting you listen on your computer or copy it onto your MP3 player.

When you do plug the radio bookmark into your computer, on a Mac you'll see this:

Double-click on the HTML file and you'll be jumped to radiobookmark.com where you'll be able to see a list of everything you've ever bookmarked and grab what you'd like.

If you're on a PC, the autorun file means that it automatically launches your browser and goes to the radiobookmark.com site.

I don't know of other radio stations that are using this sort of gizmo, but it is popular with public radio channels. If you are an NPR fan (as I am) and want to find out if your local station supports the slick gizmo your sister gave you, call 'em!

I'd say that you've got a pretty interesting device in your hands and would encourage you to learn how to use it and enjoy it. I will say, however, that they seem to be keyed to a specific NPR channel, so if your sister is in a different city, you might need to check with radiobookmark.com to find out how to tweak it to work with your local channel.

My thanks to Anne Mitchell for letting me experiment with her NPR radio bookmark. Turns out she's written about it too: check out the npr radio bookmark and never miss the end of a radio show again.