In 1998 the company Kerbango was formed by former executives from Apple and Power Computing…. but was acquired by 3Com. The companys only claim to fame was that they had made the first standalone internet connected radio (Kerbango Internet Radio).

The announced radio was the Kerbango 100E… It ran embedded linux and used RealNetworks’ G2 Player (Supported RealAudio G2, 5.0, 4.0, and 3.0, MP3). The end user would have been required to have broadband internet since dialup was not supported. Alan Luckow had designed the interface that the radio used… Later on it was adapted for iTunes.

It was announced in 2000 with a price of $299 with plans to have dialup enabled models later on but it was sadly disconued in 2001. In fact you can still view the amaazon product page @ http://www.amazon.com/Kerbango-RZ-100E-100E-Internet-Radio/dp/B00004XONG and you can also look up support for it @ http://www.3com.us/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=support&pathtype=support&sku=3C8500KBG-01.

Funny Fact: iTunes 1.x would say it was using the kerbango radio listings when it was refreshing the list (Try it for your self on a old Mac OS 9 machine).

Here is a picture of it: