Downloading the RealAudio Player for the first time and hearing audio/radio in "real-time" on the Web brought back, as best I can recall, the rush of clicking on my first transistor radio: a Xmas present, circa 1961. Although its brand name escapes me, I remember the radio was black and gold with a round tuning dial, a 9 volt battery, and a tiny earplug that I tucked in under my stocking cap, tuning in WLS, Chicago, on my morning paper route in a suburb thirty miles away. My "streaming audio" player, on the other hand, was a 2-inch long, gray, rectangular, digital image on my computer screen that could be tucked nowhere except, perhaps, into a folder on my hard drive. And I was listening to stations hundreds, in some cases, thousands of miles away.

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