Today’s Entry Into The Forgotten Tech Gadget Hall Of Shame: The Slacker Radio

In the era of the fast-fail startup, it’s kind of impressive that Slacker Radio even still exists. Especially considering the always-lousy business of streaming music. Especially considering that its name is “Slacker”.

But sure enough, Slacker is still alive, launching yet another new design, trying to wiggle its way into the mainstream between iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, etc.

Most of you have no reason to remember this, but Slacker actually launched almost six years ago with its own music-playing gadget, designed to link up via a satellite receiver (sold separately) or wifi, which downloaded a bunch of songs to play (for free) in a radio-stream format. It could also hold a few of your MP3s or Windows Media audio files (heh).

Interesting idea, and I enjoyed the few minutes I had with a prototype during my Forbes days. But even in 2007, this seemed unnecessary.