Omny Personalised Radio: Now on Australian iOS
Omny Personal Radio app which provides users customised music, data and content was released on Oct. 8, 2013 and is available exclusively on the Australian iOS App Store.
Omny allows users to control what they want to hear by selecting their favorite radio stations and blending them with their favorite music through Spotify and iTunes.
Aside from music, the personal radio app from 121cast will also feature emails, Facebook feeds, and weather forecasts.
The app saves time because it lets users listen to the information they want, which is tailored to their needs and they can get it all in one place. No more switching from one media source to another and no more time-consuming channel surfing through the radio stations.
Omny Personal Radio app uses an algorithm that learns as you go. This enables users to swipe and "like" content, thereby teaching the app what content they want to consume.
121Cast CEO and Omny co-founder Ed Hooper reportedly came up with the idea of creating the personal radio app after regularly using his smartphone on the train every day. He realised that he was missing out on important news when he was driving or walking to work.
"It drove us nuts, so we looked at radio as a replacement," Hooper said. "But with radio it's a very "one size fits all" medium, it looks at what's best for the average person in Sydney for example, whereas we're purely about the individual."
"The individual can now say "I like this type of music, I like these radio hosts, I want emails from my boss or partner, and I want to know if it's my friend's birthday." And our app can do that."
Hooper, along with fellow co-founders Long Zheng and Andrew Armstrong have been working on Omny for nearly eighteen months. Their team includes people with two PhDs, a machine learning specialist who previously worked at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a Cambridge alumna, and an ex-Buzzfeed employee.
Backed by Optus Innov8 and Adventure Capital, Omny Personal Radio app is the wave of the future. It is powered by Windows Azure. Great things are expected of this app, which is predicted to change the way we receive information.