BBC NEWS has an interesting article about broadcasters joining the world’s airwaves using Campcaster, open-source software which lets people run a radio station from a single computer for free.

Campcaster takes a regular PC and turns it into a tool for managing every aspect of a radio station broadcast. The software is the idea of the non-profit Media Development Loan Fund, which aims to support independent news media in emerging democracies.

According to developer Douglas Arellanes, as well as playing files, which can be done from any media player, Campcaster adds features specifically for radio broadcasting and uses it for all aspects of a radio station, such as the ability to stored and schedule music, line up news clips and interviews, and preview listen to a record before it is played on air.

“You can now pretty much run your radio station off a notebook computer,” he said.