A couple of weeks ago we asked you to try listening to pdx.fm with your iPhone or your iPod Touch. At the time, we were experimenting with different stream qualities, hoping that you’d give us feedback about dropped audio or sound quality. Wow, were we selling ourselves short. In just two weeks time we realized that about half of our listeners are now using an iPhone or iPod Touch to listen to our shows and the response has been nothing short of amazing. Not a single day has gone by without some suggestions and, while we’re still working to integrate a lot of them, we’re happy to announce that we’ve launched an all-new mini-site for our Apple loving mobile listeners.

So what’s new?

For starters, we’ve boosted the stream to 64k vs. the 48k we started out with. A lot of you are still using first generation iPhones with EDGE connections and apparently most of you are able to listen to 64k without a hitch in most areas – this is great news for us because while 64k still isn’t optimal for music, it’s more than enough for most talk show programming.

Second, we’ve added some of the necessities like a daily show schedule, a news page, and the ability to run contests and promotions exclusively to our mobile listeners. We’ve also added a spot for some unobtrusive advertising so we can pay a bill or two on our end.

Finally, we’ve added the ability to get most of your favorite shows in podcast form directly from iTunes without having to scour through the iTunes store. Miss a show? Touch an icon and download it directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch as soon as it becomes available. We’ve received hundreds of emails about this so we’re glad to be able to accommodate.

Is it an app?

No. We decided early on that we wanted to give our listeners the ability to use the rest of their iPhone or iPod Touch while listening to our shows and didn’t want anyone to have to download an app to do so. Instead, we’re using the built-in stream features of Quicktime – available with the iPhone 3.0 update. Using Apple’s proven streaming technology you can listen to pdx.fm without having to hunt for an app, install it onto your phone, and have to keep it active through our shows. Go ahead, play a game while listening to iPhoneSlutz. WeHeart Radio too but it seems pretty stupid to have to download an app and keep it updated just to listen to streaming audio.

More to come…

We received a lot of great ideas and what we’ve put together so far is just the beginning. Not many people realize that the core of pdx.fm consists of four people – putting together shows, scheduling guests, running websites, working on different ways to deliver content, throwing bacon parties… We appreciate your ideas and your patience, keep ‘em coming.

As always, send your thoughts, problems, suggestions, bugs, etc. to contact@pdx.fm

Want a little more perspective on all of this? Check out the write-up on siliconflorist.com