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With the invent of Television, the popularity of the Radio was reduced. But with FM radio , people are again getting addicted to Radios. Furthermore if you have a computer and internet connection then you can hear Radio through your computer. There are many internet radio stations which broadcasts news, weather and songs. You can connect to these radio stations via internet browser and hear the radio in your computer.

Difference between conventional radio and internet radio

Radio waves are used to transmit radio programmes over the air. You can then tune into your favorite stations and hear them. Whether you can hear a particular radio station depends on the distance between your radio station and your radio. Therefore you are limited to hearing only a few radio stations.

In contrast you can hear hundreds of radio stations through internet. The distance doesn’t matter any more. Just by a click you can change from one station to another station and you can hear 24 hours.

Types of internet radio

There are two types of internet radio.

1. Radio Station which requires a Player
2. Radio station which doesn’t require a player.

Player is nothing but an audio software and many players are available. Among them there are a few which can download the programmes from the radio station and play it in your computer. You have to download these players and install them. Then you can start these players and goto the URL of the radio station and hear it.

There are also a few radio stations that do not require a player to listen to it. In these stations you just goto their website and then click on the link to star hearing the radio.

Free Internet Radio Player softwares download

If you are keen to hear radio through internet then download windows media player and real player and install them in your computer.

1. Generally, windows media player comes together with your Windows OS. Therefore most probably it will be in your computer already. You can also download it fromhttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp
   
2. You can download Real player from www.real.com .
3. WinAmp is another popular player and it is available at www.winamp.com

   Most of the radio stations broadcast using real audio, windows media or mp3 formats and hence the above two players are sufficient to access any radio station in the internet.

   Some radio stations use proprietary audio formats. To hear such radios you need to download their players and install in order to hear them.

4. You can download Live 365 player from www.live365.com
   
5. You can download vtuner player from www.vtuner.com
6. Radio Netscape plus is another popular player and it is available at http://radio.netscape.com

How to access radio stations from audio players

1. In Windows media player select ‘Media guide’ and ‘Radio Tuner’.Use these options to tune into different radio stations.
2. In Real Player, choose the ‘Radio’ menu and the ‘Radio Tuner’ to choose and access many radio stations.
3. In ‘Radio Netscape Plus’ you will see a list of radio stations under many categories. Just click on the preferred radio and listen to it.

To listen to free internet radio stations from websites

1. To get thousands of internet radio stations goto http://www.shoutcast.com . From this website you can listen to radio stations using WinAmp player.

   To access many free internet radio stations you can goto the following websites.

2. www.internetradioindex.com/iprobe/ipradio2.html
   
3. www.internetradioplaza.com
   
4. www.radiotower.com
   
5. www.webradios.com
   
6. http://launch.yahoom.com/launchcast/stations

Special internet radio stations.

1. BBC         www.bbc.co.uk/radio
2. Beethoven www.beethoven.com
3. CNN        www.cnn.com/audio

We search for lots of information on the internet. But it is not necessary that others know about this. Whenever you visit any website this information is captured and stored in your computer in the form of ‘cache’, ‘cookie’, ‘history’, and ‘windows registry’. There is a danger due to this. Whoever uses the same computer after you have used can find out which websites you have been visiting. If you have a personal computer that no one else will ever use, then you don’t have to worry much about this. But if your home or office computer is shared then you better clear this history. In this tutorial let us see how to completely remove the recently visited websites from your computer.

1. Cache Folder

   Every time you visit a website, every browser has the functionality to store the images, websites, urls etc in your hard disk somewhere in the temporary folders. This is useful to save bandwidth. When you visit the same website again, instead of downloading all the images again, the browser will retrieve them from the temporary folders from your hard disks and therefore increasing the speed and saving internet bandwidth. So when you finish browsing you can clear these temporary folders. This temporary folder is usually referred to as Cache. The exact location of this folder will differ based on the browser you are using. For instance if you use Internet explorer then this cache is located in the ‘Temporary Internet Files’ folder under your c:\Windows folder.
   You can either delete from this folder or you can delete it from your browser. Goto Tools-> Internet Options. Under the General tab click ‘Delete Files’ button.

2. History

   All the browsers also store the urls of every website you visit. This is used to show the address of the site on the ‘Address Bar’ when you start typing the first few letters of the websited address, the browser will take from the history and prompt you for the full address. This makes your job easier so that you need not type the full address every time. But if you want to hide the sites you visit then you have to remove this history also. Internet explorer stores this history in a folder called ‘History’ under c:\Windows folder.

   Or you can delete history from your browser. Goto Tools-> Internet OPtions. Select the ‘General’ tab and click on ‘Clear History’ button. In the confirmation dialog box select ‘OK’. This will clear your history.

3. Cookies

   Whenever you visit websites, some information about you and some information about that website is stored in your computer’s hard disk. When you visit the same site again, the information stored in this cookie file will be read to identify you. This is especially useful for sites that can personlize the site for you and displays messages such as ‘welcome your_name’ etc. But this cookie also stores the name of the site you visit so you should also delete these cookies if you want to hide the sites you visited.

   To delete cookies, goto Tools->Internet Options. And click on ‘Delete Cookies’ button. Or you can choose the security tab and click on ‘Custom Level’ button to disable or enable cookies.

4. Registry

   Another place in which the websites you visited are stored is the windows registry. It is not advisible to modify registries if you are not sure how to use them. Only those who are confident and willing to take risk should touch the registry. Click on ‘Start->Run’ and type ‘regedit’ and press enter. The windows registry will open. Now click on ‘Edit->find’ and type ‘URL History’. In the right hand side you can see a list of website addresses that you visited. You can select them one by one and delete them. programs, viruses and hackers.