by Flack » Mon Dec 21, 2009 8:37 am
I come from a time where bandwidth was metered and valuable. I actually got dropped from an ISP once for staying connected to the Internet too long, back in the days of dialup. My brain is programmed to think that streaming media is a waste of bandwidth and resources. I am having a hard time getting used to the concept that bandwidth is virtually unlimited these days.
Over the weekend I installed Simplify Media on my home server and the corresponding iPhone app. Simplify Media lets you stream your music (and pictures) from your home machine to your iPhone. I no longer have a 16 gig iPhone; essentially now, I have a 500 gig iPhone.
Simplify Media is, for all intents and purposes, a UPnP server that works over AT&T's 3G network. The back end software that runs on your home PC is free. Simply install it (Windows, Linux and Mac versions are all available) and point it to where your music and pictures are. Those of you familiar with UPnP know that the next step is indexing your music, which Simplify will do, slowly. Once that is finished, it will sync that list with your iPhone. If you have a reasonable music collection, that shouldn't take too long. Mine's been synching for days now. It helps to turn the sleep function off and to connect via WiFi vs. 3G.
Once all that is finished, you can now stream your home music to your iPhone. Since it runs as an app, you can not listen to music in the background, so you must leave the app running. On 3G it takes me 10 seconds or so for a song to buffer up and start playing, but once it does the quality is perfect. Of course the program contains a lot of features like searching for that artist on last.fm, sending your list to facebook and looking up the song's lyrics, but I haven't tried any of those things.
Simplify's other app allows you to do the same thing, but with pictures. That's kind of cool, I think. I never think about copying pictures over to my phone but when people ask what my kids look like or something it would be nice to be able to pull them up.
I haven't really tested to see how all of that music streaming effects my battery life yet. It seems to use a lot but then again everything I do seems to effect it a lot. I charged my old phone once or twice a week and the iPhone seems to need rejuicing once a day if I'm being surf happy.
One really cool thing about the app is that you can allow up to 30 people to attach to your server. That's cool if you want to share your library with friends and don't mind them knowing that you own ABBA's Greatest Hits.
I come from a time where bandwidth was metered and valuable. I actually got dropped from an ISP once for staying connected to the Internet too long, back in the days of dialup. My brain is programmed to think that streaming media is a waste of bandwidth and resources. I am having a hard time getting used to the concept that bandwidth is virtually unlimited these days.
Over the weekend I installed Simplify Media on my home server and the corresponding iPhone app. Simplify Media lets you stream your music (and pictures) from your home machine to your iPhone. I no longer have a 16 gig iPhone; essentially now, I have a 500 gig iPhone.
Simplify Media is, for all intents and purposes, a UPnP server that works over AT&T's 3G network. The back end software that runs on your home PC is free. Simply install it (Windows, Linux and Mac versions are all available) and point it to where your music and pictures are. Those of you familiar with UPnP know that the next step is indexing your music, which Simplify will do, slowly. Once that is finished, it will sync that list with your iPhone. If you have a reasonable music collection, that shouldn't take too long. Mine's been synching for days now. It helps to turn the sleep function off and to connect via WiFi vs. 3G.
Once all that is finished, you can now stream your home music to your iPhone. Since it runs as an app, you can not listen to music in the background, so you must leave the app running. On 3G it takes me 10 seconds or so for a song to buffer up and start playing, but once it does the quality is perfect. Of course the program contains a lot of features like searching for that artist on last.fm, sending your list to facebook and looking up the song's lyrics, but I haven't tried any of those things.
Simplify's other app allows you to do the same thing, but with pictures. That's kind of cool, I think. I never think about copying pictures over to my phone but when people ask what my kids look like or something it would be nice to be able to pull them up.
I haven't really tested to see how all of that music streaming effects my battery life yet. It seems to use a lot but then again everything I do seems to effect it a lot. I charged my old phone once or twice a week and the iPhone seems to need rejuicing once a day if I'm being surf happy.
One really cool thing about the app is that you can allow up to 30 people to attach to your server. That's cool if you want to share your library with friends and don't mind them knowing that you own ABBA's Greatest Hits.