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Sirius Satellite Radio is not only adding more subscribers per month than XM, it seems that they do not stop adding content as well. The latest addition to the satellite radio provider is a hookup with Variety Magazine to form a radio news bureau in Los Angeles. Variety will provide entertainment news gossip to Sirius’ Los Angeles channel 150, multiple times each hour of every day, until they figure out how to install a gossip IV into your arm.

Topics will include film, TV, publishing and online media, as well as industry gossip, with breaking news, exclusive “scoops,” box office reports, plus film and TV production charts.

Read [Billboard Radio Monitor]

There is something called wishful thinking and then something called talking sh!t. Sirius was trying to be a big bully by talking the latter to the press this past week.

At a Convergence 2.0 conference Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin said that he would like to buy XM, but price and regulatory hurdles would be issues.

“Regarding XM - would we like to buy them? Sure. We’d love to buy them. Price would matter, so that would be an issue . . . [and] there would definitely be the regulatory issue,” he said. An XM spokesman said: “We do not comment on our competitors’ wishful thinking.”

He did calm investors immediately by stating that their business plan, “doesn’t really involve our doing a deal” and is not looking for Sirius to be bought either. So, essentially he was just talking trash, trying to flaunt Sirius’ $6.3 billion market cap and crush XM’s $3.7 cap.

Read [NY Daily News]

The 2007 Jeep Compass, coming out this summer, has been tricked out with virtually every conceivable digital amenity, going so far as to take hands-free phone use to the next level. Although the nine-speaker Boston Acoustics Sound Group with eight-channel amplifier and articulating liftgate speakers seems best-suited for listening to the output from the AM/FM stereo, six-disc CD player, built-in SIRIUS satellite radio or auxiliary input jack for an MP3 player (which can be powered from the 115-volt outlet in the center console – also good for cell phones, laptops, etc.), customers can also use it to listen to phonecalls. The Uconnect Hands-free Communication System allows users to connect their cellphones wirelessly (via Bluetooth) to an onboard receiver. The caller’s voice comes through the speakers, and a microphone in the rearview mirror completes the conversation. With that, the Compass becomes the world’s largest cell phone. Customers can even use voice commands to make phonecalls while on the road.

--Is this a car or a tech nerds dream vehicle? Neither, its a Jeep!

Written by David Thomas [E-Gear]

Sirius has recently registered the trademark Stiletto. Which we expect to coincide with their supposed next portable device. It is made from Zing and actually only delivers radio over Wi-Fi networks (an improvement over the S50 but not a solution just yet). The name Stiletto, seems to sound like a high fashion device, and makes sense to be ‘worn.’ Below is an excerpt from the Trademark office:

Word Mark STILETTO
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Electronic hardware device for receiving satellite broadcast transmissions, and playing, recording, organizing, manipulating, and reviewing text, data and audio files
Serial Number 78892447
Filing Date May 25, 2006
Owner (APPLICANT) Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 36th Floor 1221 Avenue of the Americas New York NEW YORK 10020
Type of Mark TRADEMARK

Read [Orbitcast]
Read [US Patent and Trademark Office]

Sirius Satellite Radio will be providing six hours of live coverage of Broadways biggest night - the 60th annual Tony Awards. Tune in to SIRIUS’ Broadway’s Best channel 77 Sunday, June 11th from 6pm to midnight ET.

[Join] 2006 Tony Award-nominees Harry Connick, Jr. (The Pajama Game), Sutton Foster (The Drowsy Chaperone), Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd), Chita Rivera, Phil Collins (Tarzan the Musical), and Tony Award-winners Bernadette Peters, Matthew Broderick, Marvin Hamlisch, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Betty Buckley join Christine Pedi, Michael Bourne and Seth Rudetsky for six hours of “ahmazing” live coverage of the 60th annual Tony Awards on SIRIUS Satellite Radio.

Read [Sirius’ Broadway’s Best]
Via [Orbitcast]

A couple of Yale students started a new site called PerSecondPodcast. Basically, it is an online time capsule of audio...and offers a pretty unique advertising opportunity that anyone can contribute to. The space is provided for whatever audio you like (podcasts, ads, music, stories, rants, messages, etc) at a per second basis.

Submissions will be broadcasted via four online podcasts, will soon be RSS-subscribable via iTunes, played on college radio stations across the country, submitted for play on XM and Sirius satellite radio, and physically housed in several iPod time capsules to be buried upon completion of the project.

[Thanks Elliot]

Product: Sirius S50
Price: $249.99 (Buy.com)
Rating: Average 6.9/10
Pros: Feature-packed, sleek design, simple setup
Cons: Not portable when streaming live content, confusing navigation, bulky when combined with car dock
Overall: A great device if you don’t need access to live programming on the go.

The Sirius S50 is a neat little device.  It essentially is a TiVo for your Sirius satellite radio.  I found the marketing a little confusing and can see how some might easily confuse it with a portable satellite radio… but it’s hardly portable (if you’re into live radio).  The device is really made for people that have long commutes to work, or primarily listen to music/ radio in their car.  In addition, it’s quite disappointing that the live radio can only be accessed in the car, due to the need of an antenna and satellite receiver.  When you take it out off of the car-dock (which it’s bundled with), you no longer are able to get a live feed. 

Read on for a breakdown of the Sirius S50 satellite radio.

Design - 6.5 - The S50 has a slick design to it.  The player itself is in the shape of a trapezoid (from the side), weighs just 6.5 ounces, and measures 1.9” x 3.9” x .7”.  Centered on the device is a 262,000 color TFT display.  The size is perfectly portable until you tack on the size of the car dock (which is 1.9” x 3.9").  The buttons on the S50 are all on the side, leaving it with a black shiny finish on the front.  The buttons are pretty confusing since they decided not to use your traditional play, stop, and pause buttons.  When the device is in the car dock, you use the car dock’s wheel to control the radio station.  In addition to functioning as a wheel (similar to the volume button on your car stereo), it also moves like a joystick to make use of its other features.  The S50 car bundle comes standard with headphones, a belt clip, and a USB cable for connecting to a Windows 2000 or XP PC.  The S50 is light weight and small enough for your everyday use.

Setup - 7.5 - Setting up the S50 for radio listening is simple.  All you need to do is plug everything in, and it works.  The S50 sits in the car dock, the car dock has inputs/outputs for the antenna, audio, and power on the back of it.  The setup becomes a little bit more confusing when you install all of the car features that come with it.  I didn’t use the mounting accessories in my testing.  Since the device functions as an MP3 player as well, you can hook it up to your computer (if you want) and transfer some songs over.

Features - 8.0 - So lets say you’re driving or sitting in your house (using the home dock), and you hear a song that you want to record.  With the S50, all you have to do is press the heart icon and “Love” the song.  By using this TiVo-like method, you can save up to 50 hours of content.  The songs are then stored on your device by artist, title, or genre.  When you become obsessed with on of Sirius’ 120 channels, the S50 will automatically learn that channel and save it to your favorites.  This way you don’t have to use the wheel to toggle through 100 channels just to get to Howard Stern.  It will store your 3 favorite (most played) stations.  Also included are the following features:

• Game Alerts - Alerts you when your favorite teams are playing


• Sports Ticker - Get up to the minute score updates of your favorite teams without changing the channel


• 
  30 channel presets


• One touch JUMP to access traffic and weather reports for your city or use to tune to your favorite Sirius channel


• 6 hours battery life in portable mode - which is on the low-end for portable media players

If you’re looking for a device that doesn’t need to sit in a dock to get live content, you may want to check out some XM2Go devices which run on XM, not Sirius.

Usability - 6.0 - After spending some quality time with the S50 in my car, I never really got too in to it.  It may be because I had it sitting in my cup holder instead of on the included mount, but it was simply not easy enough to use.  The buttons on the side combined with even more buttons on the dock made it confusing to navigate and do what I wanted.  Although it looks great with all of the buttons on the side, it may have made it that much more confusing in the end.

So if you’re looking for a portable media player with a side of streaming satellite content, you should check out the Sirius S50 right away.

Editor’s note - The overall rating was calculated by weighting Design as 40%, Setup as 20%, Features as 20%, and Usability as 20%.

This is a nice present for your father or yourself and will hardly cost you a thing (assuming you have a Sirius account). Sirius Satellite Radio announced that they have plans to stream The Howard Stern Show via the Internet to Sirius subscribers by Father’s Day. Even when Stern was on terrestrial radio he never agreed to streaming. Now there is even less of a reason to do work while in the office, you can be reading blogs and listening to Stern.

Read [Oritbcast]