As a news junkie, I love the principle of Internet radio.

It's free, it's instantaneous and with newspapers evaporating, getting news via broadband has become an important option. This is especially true if you're seeking news about foreign lands.

Internet radio used to be a real clunky affair. In the early days you'd log onto a station and listen to it on your computer. It's morphed from the PC to a variety of smaller mobile devices such as the iPhone where you can listen in anywhere there's Wi-Fi.

For this piece I contacted my digital radio guru, Kiman Wong over at Oceanic. Kiman had some good suggestions for radios that news (and music) lovers would appreciate.

The first and newest is the Squeezebox (www.logitechsqueezebox.com) from Logitech. Logitech has made the Squeezebox, roughly the size of a brick, very easy to set up and navigate. Sound quality is great for an inexpensive unit and the company has pre-programmed a number of stations (both music and news sources) to which you can choose to listen. You also can stream music from your PC, iPod or from sources like Pandora on the Internet.

The biggest difference from the old-fashioned Internet radios is the addition of a little screen that depicts the name of the show or the song that's playing. The screen also allows you to integrate with applications such as Amazon and Facebook - a huge leap from Internet radios of just a few years back. You can use it as an alarm clock, too, but alas there's no snooze bar! Price is about $150.

Kiman says if you want a good bedside system, check out the Roku SoundBridge. Unlike the Logitech model, this combines conventional AM/FM with the Internet. Buttons are well placed and easy to use. You also can stream audio from networked PCs and the Internet, and it supports applications such as Rhapsody, Yahoo Music Engine, iTunes and other audio-server applications. The quality of the built-in speakers is excellent, and there's remote if you don't want to get out of your chair. The main downside is that there have been reports from users that the power supply tends to go kaput after a year or two. Price is about $250. Visit soundbridge.roku.com/soundbridgeradio/index.php.

There are a couple of other good options. CNET.com likes the sound quality of the Grace ITC-IR1000B Wireless Internet Radio, which goes for about $140, and the numerous features of the Aluratek Internet Alarm Clock Radio, which sells for about $100. You can get both on Amazon.com.