iTunes to ipaq

WiFiTunes in action

I'm still not very happy with using iTunes but with the DAAP support and Winamp coming to a slow end I'm forced to use it. I thought it was pretty cool that the xbox media centre supported DAAP, but hot on the heals of that comes WiFiTunes which is still in alpha but is GPL'ed. Yes it doesnt support AAC but I would never encode my stuff as AAC, but I can understand why this would put some people off who have whole playlists of AAC's. Its a real shame I cant use it at work because the Wifi is locked down. Oh link came from pocketpcthoughts. I did some experimenting in the office today with Toms Mac laptop, and it works quite well. Theres little controls, so once its playing its playing and so you cant jump around the music file yet! But it will play all the playlists no problem (even recently played and top rated) and the delay in connecting is small, like 5secs maximum over 802.11b. One thing we did discover, is the wifitunes doesnt seem to register as a user, so if you shutdown itunes you dont get the usual prompt asking if you want to boot other users off. Still very usable for a alpha.

It certainly beats using a streaming server setup to listen to music or podcasts in the bathroom without copying the file to SD first. Talking of which, My house is fully FM tuned using the iTrip style FM Transmiters which I believe are still not available in the UK. My main problem is the signal doesnt reach past the kitchen which is a bit of a pain. Anyway, I hooked it all up so I can now listen to something on the FM signal and choose another thing in the living room. Real multiple room audio, so Sarah can listen to the hits of the 80's in the bedroom or/and kitchen while I enjoy the sounds of Armin Van Buuren. 88.5 if you ever go past my house and are interested in what we may be liistening to…

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Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io