The ScooterBlog

In my travails on the ‘net lately, it’s been all about finding ways to get the files you have out to the world so you can get them from anywhere, cellular included. I’ve been using Avvenu as a means of listening to iTunes music anywhere, and while it’s nice for iTunes integration, its player is low of features, and sometimes the sound quality is not perfect, but it’s decent.

Thus came the want to find something even more feature-packed. Orb so far has been my solution! It has worked perfectly for music, allows me to view all of my computer’s files from anywhere, and does so with a snazzy interface and a ton of customizability. It can just as easily be your homepage for the day as it could be your ultimate media player.

Cell phone integration isn’t a problem either. They have a special interface for phones that works perfectly on PocketPC and Smartphone devices like my BlackJack, and since it can output to Flash formats, you can use it on your Wii AND PS3! They also throw in the ability to stream natively through an XBox 360 on your local network (just for kicks I guess). I’ve tried the Wii and 360 customizability, and it does work nicely.

The only bug I have right now is that it’s not putting M4A (iTunes AAC Format) songs into my Library, but I can still access them and listen to them by browsing the files.

I have yet to try a lot of what this program can do … TV tuning ala Slingbox, DVR style recording, and audio recording and accessing Internet Radio feeds, but so far, I am really really happy with it, if for nothing else, because I now no longer need to “pre-load” music onto my Blackjack. I just get it wherever I need it!

Now there have been some other options out there … Lifehacker has an article on using a web server program named Jinzora, and ArsTechnica has a feature on MediaMaster and MP3Tunes, a couple of very nice hosted media solutions, and how they work. It’s also worth noting that the article that turned me onto Orb was on Lifehacker here, and offers some of the other options mentioned here too. It’s well featured and talks about lots of choices. Well worth your reading, and not hard to set up this stuff … why not have your music wherever you want it!