By customer request, WireReady has coded native support for playing *.mp3 files in its NewsReady and ControlReady products. This means news departments that download and work with lots of mp3 files will no longer have to convert them to WAV before embedding them in stories and airing them with the software. This also means that ControlReady live assist and onair automation customers can also schedule and play mp3 files in their playlists. Version 11.5 is our in-progress version that will be released as Version 12 early next year.  If you have a Silver Gold or Platinum support plan, and would like to try this version or even use it on air, contact our support department or download it from our website. Click here for more information about MP3 Playback (PDF). You can also view more information about all the improvements to our current version 11.0. Click here to download WireReady32 Features Version 11 (PDF).

At the 2012 Arkansas Associated Press Broadcaster's Awards banquet, KTLO, Classic Hits and The Boot brought home seven awards from competition in five categories against all radio stations in Arkansas, regardless of market size. The station's website, KTLO.com, was named the most outstanding website among radio stations. Congratulations! See the full story on KTLO.com

KTLO is a long-time WireReady user in their newsroom and on-air and has also been using WebReady for content management since 2005. WebReady allows them to update content throughout the day on KTLO.com in many categories, including news, obits, sports, community events, cancellations and more. Visit our website or call us today to find out how we can "KTLO" your website!

Some folks have really big folders of stories or audio files in their systems. A few customers have them in the TENS of thousands. For folders with a few thousand or less files, you might not notice any delay when you open the File Select to load an audio file in a list, deck or Notepad. Depending on the speed of your computer or server though, and if you have thousands of files, you might be waiting a second or two, even longer before the screen draws. There are a few tricks you might not be aware of. Most of the time you are using a folder (list of files) and not necessarily looking for anything that was just done in the last minute or so. So why wait for us to check the entire folder? You can suppress this update so we only show the newest files when you hit SELECT folder or the REFRESH button. This means anytime you SELECT a different folder or open the Fileselect window, we can draw the list immediately with the last known index we updated the previous time you or someone else looked in the folder which depending on how often you use the folder might be as recent as seconds ago anyway. Click here for more information (PDF)    

From the Filelog, you can now choose SETUP and choose Dual Screen mode. This lets you split the screen horizontally or vertically and have TWO of everything. Two notepads, two wires screens, two Filelogs, etc. And you can now drag drop files from one Filelog to another (or rundown) and drag/drop files around when in rundown mode if you like to stack separate stories in a list you read for long format shows. And when you are reading one story, you can now hit NEXT to jump immediately to the next story without having to go back to the Filelog and cursor down to the next story.

AP plans to convert all broadcast subscribers to Internet delivery by year end. If you haven't been contacted by AP, you soon will be or you can call AP. No worries, the conversion is easy and quick and free for all WireReady customers who already use the Windows version of NewsReady and have a support plan. We're also compatible with MetroSource's Internet server push software too, so if you have Metrosource and would like to use WireReady to receive it, we can capture both the text and audio cuts from the service in our software.

Occasionally folks ask us if anyone has successfully run WireReady through a Windows Emulator on a MAC or has done thin client multi-user configs using a Citrix or terminal services equipped server - doing anything from RBDS or  a VMWare hosted box running multiple remote desktop client sessions? We know folks have figured out how to run us from Linux (Richard "Ubunto" Keane), but so far that's the craziest way we've heard of running WireReady. If you've done any of this (or something similar) with your WireReady, send us the details! We'd love to hear about it and share it in our next newsletter.

David Gerstmann