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Found Footage: Stream music from your computer to your iPhone

Simplify Media allows you to stream music from your home computer (or from the iTunes libraries of 30 of your close personal friends) to your iPhone or iPod touch via WiFi. Admittedly this video is pure marketing, but the concept is cool. I installed a copy of the 1.0 alpha build from Installer.app, and gave it a spin--or at least I tried. The program requires that you have a Simplify Media account so I had to step back and grab a desktop client first. Then after painfully installing the software, signing agreements and clicking "I don't have an account yet", I finally got signed up and added my music folders. The whole process took about 20 frustrating minutes but persistence paid off. I then returned to my iPhone, signed in with my new account, and although I was able to get correct listings of my music library, none of the songs actually played back--causing "Server is not responding" errors instead.

This is one of the caveat lector instances: Boy, does this tool sound like it's going to be great but at the same time it doesn't really work as well as you might hope, at least it doesn't for me right now (some commenters have had better luck, see below). Simplify Media for iPhone is an alpha release and presumably will be finalized sometime after the official iPhone SDK ships.



Simplify Media allows you to stream music from your home computer (or from the iTunes libraries of 30 of your close personal friends) to...
 

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Jeff Ayling

http://www.dottunes.net

December 16 2007 at 7:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jeff Ayling's comment
Calexifan

Dot-Tunes costs money, while this solution is free.

Oh, and Jeff, rather than just posting a link to the Dot-Tunes site, don't you think you should also disclose that you are the OWNER of the company?

December 17 2007 at 5:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
slevytam

Actually guys this is working just great. Here is a link to a tutorial I just made on how I did it:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=468

Hope this helps someone out!

December 15 2007 at 8:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
swisspolo

I can't remember the full address as its a google open source repository but here's an article, http://www.sipedia.co.uk/mac/ipodwifistream.php, about a Telekinesis app that lets you steam video to ipod touch and have full ipod control as if it were saved on the ipod

Simon

December 15 2007 at 5:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matthew Thiel

Thanks for sharing about it, Erica. I was going to check it out when I had time, but now I think I'll wait a few months to see if they improve the reliability a little.

December 15 2007 at 3:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jtd

Jay, you want Firefly Media Server which is already in the Installer.app repositories.

December 15 2007 at 2:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul Joyce

@webbuy, we're sorry you encountered playback errors. If you, or anyone else who runs into a problem, could send us an email at support at simplifymedia, we'd appreciate the opportunity to discover the cause and get it resolved.

@darcagn, we agree; without playlists, navigating a large library is a challenge. Your suggestions are excellent, and they are the types of things we will be working on.

December 14 2007 at 9:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gidgidonihah

Jay, I don't know if you realized, but your iphone actually has built-in speakers :p

Seriously though, I've been using simplify media to listen to my home library at work already. And like everyone else has mentioned, installation was about as simple as could be. Didn't take more than 2 compared to your 20.

You might want to update the post to say the commenters' installation experience was better so as not to mislead everyone.

December 14 2007 at 7:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Gidgidonihah's comment
webbuy

I didn't think the installation was terribly difficult, and if you have reasonably well-organized playlists, even the interface is tolerable. However, it took forever (hours) to index my songs, and then I was plagued with "Server is not responding" errors on most of the music. The setup and firewall settings were OK, since some of the music did play back, but it wasn't responsive enough to be worthwhile to me.
As others have mentioned, there are many alternatives, and there's always SeeqPod.

December 14 2007 at 8:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
darcagn

It was pretty simple to install, but some issues:

1) Cannot use EDGE. If I need WiFi, it's useless to me. Most of the time I listen to my iPod when I'm on campus, and the iPhone cannot connect to 802.11x-auth networks.
2) Cannot browse by artist or album; can only view by song name; doesn't exclude the, a, and an from alphabetization. I have 13,000+ songs. It's absolutely unusable.
3) Doesn't let you set custom stream settings. I would, for example, be willing to sacrifice stereo sound for higher quality, some might not.
4) The interface sucks. It would be great if it integrated with your iTunes library, displayed album art, and in general had an interface exactly like the iPhone's "iPod" application.

Yes, I understand this is an alpha version, but I just wanted to point my opinions out. I'm looking very forward to this. My library is too big for all iPods except the largest currently offered, so I have been praying for an application like this and I can't wait until it's in a usable form.

December 14 2007 at 7:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jay

What about the other way around: streaming music from my iPhone to iTunes/wifi? So I can play music at my friend's house without carrying a headphone adapter to get a mini jack into the %*&'n beveled headphone jack?

December 14 2007 at 7:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ruppert

Remote Buddy can control iTunes and AirPort Express without a jailbreak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DfqP6ScU_g

December 14 2007 at 7:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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