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The deadline for entries is coming up tomorrow at midnight (PDT)! All RP supporters between now and then will be automatically entered into our
drawing for a week at Cashew Hill Jungle Lodge in
beautiful Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica — including airfare from anywhere in the continental US or Canada.
Click here for details on the contest — or you can just
jump right in and send support now via MasterCard or Visa or use
PayPal. We truly appreciate the generous support we get from listeners like you,
and we're happy to be able to give something back in return. Good luck!
We're really excited about our new line of RP t-shirts. They're 100% organic cotton, responsibly manufactured, comfortable, and available in three very cool new colors, as well as black and white. Plus we have two new colors of long-sleeve shirts that are also 100% organic cotton.
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"Just Say No" to paper or plastic at the grocery store. These reusable, versatile, lightweight yet very strong and durable bags are an answer to filling up the landfill with plastic and hacking down our forests for paper. They
also have a nifty little carabineer that snaps onto your belt loop, back pack or key chain. We use ours every day at the grocery store & farmers' market, etc.
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These little beauties from Audio Engine are hands-down the best desktop speakers you'll find in their size and price range. We
use them ourselves every day, so we can vouch for them personally. They're the perfect match for your PC or Mac desktop system, laptop, or a
Roku Soundbridge. Available in black and white.
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We're very happy to introduce a full line of very nice 100% soy candles. They burn up to 3 times as long as normal candles, and come in a variety of styles & scents. They make a great gift, but be sure to order
a few for yourself as well.
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We have a number of other new additions to our RP Shirts & Stuff Emporium, so click on in and have a look around. Don't miss the elephant poo stationery from Sri Lanka (no, we're not kidding),
our very nice bistro-style coffee mugs (along with the coffee to go in them), or our selection of local products from companies here in the Paradise area (we love supporting our neighbors).
A substantial portion of all purchases goes to help us keep the bills paid & keep the music going commercial-free here on RP. Thanks!
Another way you can support RP is to use our affiliate merchant links when you do your online shopping. When you do, we get a commission on everything you buy.
Our affiliates include
Amazon.com (US), 
Amazon (UK), 
Amazon (Canada), 
Amazon (Germany), 
Amazon (France), 
The Apple Store, 
Apple Store Canada, 
iTunes Music Store, 
Netflix, 
CD Baby,
Simple Living Network,
and many others.
Click here for the complete list of RP affiliate merchants.
Thanks to the tremendous outpouring of support we received about the royalty rates that the big record companies were trying to impose on Internet
radio stations like RP, the US Congress has intervened and told the RIAA guys that they had to play fair and negotiate a rate with webcasters that
won't bankrupt our entire industry.
All of the dust hasn't settled, but it looks like we will continue to pay the highest royalties of any class of broadcaster in the US — but not
the absurdly high rates that the record companies had wanted (and that the US Copyright Office had rubber-stamped). For all of the details, see the July 13th
edition of Kurt Hanson's RAIN newsletter,
or this Wired blog post.
Thanks again to all of you who called, wrote, picketed, and annoyed your Senators and Representatives about this issue. You made enough noise to
override the efforts of one of the slickest and most effective lobbying outfits in DC, and that's really something to be proud of.
The fight to pass the Internet radio Equality Act is continuing. Passage of this legislation would still be a far better solution than an
agreement with SoundExchange that will expire in 2010, leaving us faced with another situation just like this.
The IREA provides fair
royalty payments to artists and labels, but also allows stations like RP to grow and prosper. See SaveNetRadio.org
for more details.
We are happy to announce the return of our 192k MP3 stream. Thanks a bunch to the folks at IronColo in
NYC for making that possible. If you're looking for hosting services, give them a try. Mention RP for a 15% discount!
The 192k MP3 stream is limited to 450 listeners. If it's full, try the 192k Octoshape link or our 128k AAC stream. We think that the
sound quality on these streams is the best you'll find anywhere online.
SnappRadio is a very cool companion to RP: a browser window that picks images from the massive Flickr photosphere to accompany the music currently playing on RP.
It accepts feedback from you on the suitability of particular images, so its ability to match songs and photos will improve over time. Your participation and
feedback are greatly appreciated.
Click here to check it out.
SnappRadio is a project of Sun Labs, and was developed by RP listener Paul Lamere. For more info & discussion see
this forum topic. The link above opens a popup window. If you'd prefer you
can also open SnappRadio in a full browser window.
 After we posted the info on SnappRadio, RP listener Dion LeRoux emailed us to let us know
that he'd been working on a similar application called ZoobTube that mines the web for video clips as well as still images to accompany
RP's music - with sometimes striking (& sometimes bizarre) results. It's definitely worth checking out, and Dion is interested in your feedback, too.
We're once again enlisting the aid of all of you brave RP early adopters. We're testing a new stream delivery method that may save us a fairly large bundle of
money in the future, and we're interested in your reports on how well it works for you.
It requires the use of a small, unobtrusive plug-in program. You'll need to
click here to download the plugin before the links below will work
(Mac & Linux users please note the links at the bottom of the download page).
Octoshape 64k AAC+
Octoshape 192k MP3
Let us know how it works for you by posting in this forum topic. The Octoshape network has handled some very large-scale webcasts (including the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest), so we have
high hopes for the quality of the stream delivery. Thanks for helping us with the evaluation.
A very cool new feature here is our RP Web Visitors World Map. You can see
the number of RP website visitors during the past hour or day, mapped either by country or city, updated every 2 minutes.
We also have a very cool (& very large) RP Wallpaper Map - updated daily with the location of all website visitors within the past 24 hours.
For more stats & info about your fellow RP listeners, see the Members link.
The feature is made possible by www.hostip.info.
Visit their site to confirm that your IP address is being tracked correctly, and to enter it into their database if it's not. You can discuss map or IP-tracking
issues in this forum topic.
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For fine dining & entertainment in Chico, Ca. we definitely recommend Cafe Coda.