Would you like to stream your music collection to yourself, regardless of where you happen to be, home, work, internet cafe? I know I would… and now I can. The best part is that it was free and easy to do.
There has been a lot of talk about different tools to control iTunes from a remote system, but they all involve playing the music back out on the server, not where you are. SliMP3 solves that issue and takes it even further!
Here’s what you need for this project:
Dedicated, connected machine (Mac,Linux, or Windows) with MP3 collection connected or inside another computer, with an internet connection and an MP3 player and browser you might also consider the SliMP3 hardware which connects directly to your stereo…(you will need additiional networking gear, like a wifi bridge for this)
The app installs as a preference pane in OS X and can be set to run on login or startup, making it possible to access your tunes even if the machine is waiting for someone to login. Once it is installed, things get configured and run through your browser. If you have the hardware, you can remote control the hardware with the browser, or the supplied remote control. (I don’t have it yet…waiting on the digital-out version.) Once you set the location of your tunes, either with the location of you iTunes library — which it reads for Playlists! — or simply your music directory, you can begin a queue. In iTunes, you can open a new stream
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. You can create massive random shuffle lists by artist, genre whatever. It rocks!
A comprehensive overview was done by Tom’s Hardware, which covers the hardware and software in fantastic detail… There are also user and dev groups at Yahoo Groups — search for slimp3.