The Internet goes crazy for Virtual Rainmaker

When father of two, Neil Lockwood (Adelaide, South Australia) told his friend Andrew Rose (Newcastle, New South Wales) about his new side projectraining.fm on Sunday afternoon, he had no idea that Andrew’s submission to Hacker News (a popular web startup news site) would set off a viral "downpour" of traffic to the rain streaming website and praise from people all around the globe.

Within 24 hours, the raining.fm site had over 20,000 visitors. Neil was praised from the US to China, with comments on Twitter such as “Just spent the last 30 minutes listening to this, blissfully unaware that it was coming from my speakers” -@bradmerlin and “I am actually feeling "cooler".. The brain works in mysterious ways.. Thank you #rainingfm” - @andrebass.

Not only is the site for people who just plain love rain, but Neil’s source code has been of help to a number of Developers that chose to reward him by buying him a virtual beer as thanks. Neil’s decision to leave the source code easily available for Developers to see has paid off with many emails of praise and support from the Development community also. Neil says “The emails and support from people has been amazing and has really inspired me to keep working on the site”.

Neil was ecstatic and celebrated with a real beer with his fianc. Neil is self-proclaimed “rain crazy” and commented “It’s great to know that my website can have such a profound positive effect on people all around the world”.

When asked what the next step was, Neil replied with “The next step is to get the website working on mobile devices such as the iphone, ipad and android devices. At the moment they present a few hurdles but I’m sure with further work we can get this going”.

Join the craze by using #rainingfm on Twitter, and check out the raining.fm site for some relaxed audio for work, play and sleep. Submit your details on the site to show your support.