Searching the web for meta, we found Olinda, which is a web connected radio. It’s still in protoype, but the general idea speaks loud and clear: with its built in social network, it shows you the stations your friends are listening to, making listening to radio a highly social experience. Lights on Olinda indicate when a close friend is listening to the radio, using wifi and Radio Pop, the BBC’s website for sharing ‘now playing’ information. Each light is also a button: you can tune in to listen along with them. In this way you can easily discover new stations via your social network.

Olinda shows how consumer products can learn from the web. Features already familiar on the web, such as customizing, adding profiles and auto-complete functionalities, are creatively copied to the offline world with Olinda. For example, Olinda offers a tune dial that scrolls only the stations you most listen to, instead of scrolling all available stations.

We think this is a nice example of how physical products can become more than just the product, when connected to the web.