Quick note for all you BlackBerry Storm users out there: Starting today Verizon is pushing Slacker Radio out to all the Storms network wide. Why? Well, Verzion worked out a deal with Slacker to integrate V Cast into the app. So when a song is playing on Slacker, there will be a button which will allow you to purchase the song via  V CAST Music with Rhapsody catalog. Neat, I guess.

Sony’s $300 Internet Video Link add-on box for BRAVIA-series TVs has recently added the Slacker streaming music service to the list of available channels. Also added was content from Howcast.com, a site that contains a series of user-generated how-to videos. Slacker ought to lend some good music features to Sony’s service and Howcast has won some awards from TIME and PC Magazine, so both seem like good additions.

Full release after the jump…

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Today, Slacker announced the G2 personal radio player, which is 10x better than the first gen device. The 4GB model handles 25 stations while the 8GB model stores up to 40 are available for $200 and $250, respectively. The Wi-Fi has also been beefed up and battery life is up around 15 hours. The G2 is 40 percent smaller than the first gen model and you can side load your own music to the device, but it’s limited to the PC. There is still no support for Mac users. It supports MP3, WMA and AAC.

That’s all the updated info and if you’re interested then keep reading for a full-on review.
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Today RIM announced the Slacker application available for BlackBerry. It was demoed at CTIA and I got a chance to play around with it a little bit.

The relationship brings Slacker Personal Radio to BlackBerry devices. The biggest benefit is the ability to cache thousands of songs. Every time you hit a hotspot the device will sync and update the station. Plenty of music is available from Fergie to Bad Company. If you don’t like something, you can ban the song or artist. Conversely, if you do like something you hear, you can rate the artist or get more info. I didn’t see a “buy now” link, but I’ll bet donuts to dollars somebody is working on that.

Read the rest and see some pics over at MobileCrunch.

Today at CTIA, Slacker announced that come October they will have a full fledged app ready to roll on BlackBerry devices. I previewed this yesterday on a Bold that happened to be T-Mobile branded, but it’s probably a European model. Anyway, the app was integrated into the BB very well and left rather impressed. The app and service are free, but you do have the option of the pay service should you choose to go that route. Our boys on the floor at CTIA will have a video demo shortly.

When you’ve seen one unboxing, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Laptop points out that the player is big and bulky, but it does have a 4-inch screen. Umm. Why do you need such a large screen for a device that doesn’t play video? The UI is very similar to the Web site so you won’t get discombobulated when using it. It has a touch strip for the sake of having some touch controls. Refreshing content wirelessly seems to be a breeze and is quite fast. It doesn’t sound all that impressive, but we’ll soon find out when we get our paws on one.

Was anyone really surprised that Slacker delayed shipment of their player multiple times? Come on! With a name like Slacker it was inevitable. Anyway, pre-orders began shipping today. In case you wanted to know.

Lovers of Slacker Radio, prepare to shower me with petals of rare flowers, delicious food, and promises of sexual favors, for I bring news that the Slacker Portable, which has been delayed more times than Winehouse’s rehab visits, is finally set to ship tomorrow.

For those not in the know, the Slacker Portable is a device not unlike an iPod or Zune, but it uses local Wi-Fi to load songs into the device which are played for your, and you rate them, as you do on the Slacker website.

For those who like social networking mixed in with their music, this is the player for you, and you can thank me for the news later.

Slacker Portable Ships Tomorrow. What’s Next? [Laptop, whom we bested in Beer Pong at CES, just so's ya know]

So I groped the Slacker Portable last night. I’ve been hard on Slacker about how delayed its portable player has been. First it was supposed to be here by the end of the summer, then it was supposed to be here in December, then it got delayed again until the end of January. I hope it launches in the end of January like it’s supposed to because I don’t think it’ll be able to survive another delay.

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Aaaaaaand, I’m done. That’s enough for me, thank you. I give up. First it was the end of summer, then it was mid-December, now it’s the end of January when the Slacker Portable is supposed to ship. I have no faith that it’ll ship on that date. Sorry.

I’d been waiting to buy this thing since the moment it was announced. I had custom searches and RSS feeds set up for news about it. I anxiously waited for summer to turn to fall. Then nothing.

This has undertones like the Phantom game system and the Palm Foleo. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear Slacker announce that it’s going to scrap its plans to sell hardware players altogether to instead concentrate on software. The Slacker software player is great, don’t get me wrong. I’ve just lost faith in the hardware part.

Slacker Personal Radio [Slacker.com] via Google News

Well it’s here (almost). Although promised by the end of the summer, the Slacker Portable is now available for pre-order and should ship in mid-December.

You shouldn’t think of it as an MP3 player, per se, although you can load MP3 and WMA files onto the device. Think of it more as a personal portable radio. You listen to songs and rate them. The ones you hate never show up again and the ones you love show up more often. Music is transferred to the player over a Wi-Fi connection and artist/song biographical information is displayed on the 4-inch color screen (it’s not a touchscreen, though).

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Radio gives you two important things: It keeps you from getting in a musical rut, and you don’t have to make any decisions about what to listen to next. Now that customizable Internet radio services like Last.fm and Slacker are all the rage, the time has never been better for Apple to let iPod users get a piece of the action. I smell an iPod + Slacker partnership now that Apple got GooTube to hop on the iPhone train….

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Wired recently sat down with Broadband Instruments to talk about its new Slacker music service. In a nutshell, it sounds like a music-lover’s dream. Slacker is comprised of both a service and hardware device. The service will use either WiFi or satellite bandwidth to serve up music channels to owners of the Slacker player. Tons of music, lots to choose from, all that great stuff – think Pandora, except a bit more corporate.

Now here’s the kicker: the service is free. Yup, totally free, but you can only skip six tracks per hour on the service. That means if you keep on shuffling and get stuck with Kenny Rogers, you’ll have to wait it out. There’s also ads on the Slacker player itself, which features USB, touch sensitive scrolling, and a massive 4-inch screen. Expect to shell out $150 to $350 for a player depending on the size of the memory inside it.

So how does a company like Broadband Instruments make money out of all this? Well next month or so, they’ll be rolling out a $7.50 monthly fee which will allow you to skip tracks to your heart’s content and gets rid of banner ads on the player. This service sounds extremely promising and I’m curious as to how they’re going to market this. Either way, keep an eye out for Slacker if music is your thing and you like free service.

Broadband Instruments Slacker Offers Satellite, Wi-Fi Connectivity [Wired]
Is Slacker the Long-speculated iPod-Killer? [Laptop]
New Music Service Slacker Has (very) Broad Ambitions [TechCrunch]