Rai News 24 - Streaming Live on your Desktop

If you're stuck at work for 8-9 a day like I am, but you don't want to give up practicing your Italian for some part of the day, check out Rai News 24 (in diretta).

Think of this an the internet version of an Italian CNN -- 24 news streaming on your PC. You can listen and/or watch the news (there's a streaming video and audio feed) while you work if you're at your desk.

To the right of the main video player is a list of the important stories of the day, which you can watch as videos. So if you tuned in after an interesting story, just click on the link, and the video will load in the same player as that of the live news. To get back to the live news, just refresh the page.

The great thing about this live feed are:

• There's nothing to download.
• It's always on (although I've noticed there are times of the day when it doesn't work, usually late at night and during the afternoon around lunch time in Italy)
• You get a mix of different presenters which represent the entire country, thus getting an exposure to different accents and regions of Italy
  
• News presenters tend to be very good speakers with good diction
• Stories will give you a good idea of what's going on in Italy
  

One downside is that the live feed does require a good deal of bandwidth. It might take a few minutes if you're using a wireless connection for the feed to get started. If you're connected via ethernet, you shouldn't notice any slowdowns.