Comments on: What are YOU listening to?

What are YOU listening to?

2or3whiskeysodas — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:32:27 -0800

Simplify Media has made my Sunday morning, and if you have pals with good taste in music it will probably make your day, too. It's a small download (4 MB) that allows you to stream the iTunes libraries of up to 30 friends as long as they're online.

By: armoured-ant

armoured-ant — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:45:48 -0800

Awesome!

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:11:43 -0800

I'm interested to hear from the tech savvy as to possible security risks--while understanding that they are probably minimal and I'm not terribly risk adverse online (that is, I feel I am fairly well firewalled, etc)--because this does sound great. I've got a decent library and a couple of close friends that share music. Burning & shipping CDs sounds sooooo 1998, and most of this circle are somewhat tech impaired. I've tried sharing with them through IP access and that, frankly, has been beyond them. So, mods, I'll take this AskMe if you think, or shall the mavens weigh in here? It sounds great on the face of it.

By: homodigitalis

homodigitalis — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:18:25 -0800

I hate iTunes! The new version eats almost 100 Mbyte of RAM while running. Talk about bloatware. If you install this filesharing thingy it will only get worse. I'll wait for the winamp version - or use Hamachi to VPN my friends. More geekery, less crappy bloatware.

By: bashos_frog

bashos_frog — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:45:20 -0800

hamachi is cool - I used to use it a lot. Gnump3d was what I used to stream my home library to my workplace, until I moved from Japan back to a country where upstream bandwith is horribly crippled.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:10:13 -0800

I hate iTunes! The new version eats almost 100 Mbyte of RAM while running. I'm with you HD. Both the latest iTunes and the latest WMP fail on my system. I have a huge mp3 library on an external drive and both programs jump up to 100% cpu use as soon as they go idle and become unresponsive. Then I have to kill them in the task manager. I'm sure it is some flaw in their media detection but I can't be arsed to troubleshoot it. I switched the MediaMonkey which works just fine without all the crap of the Microapple turds.

By: gfrobe

gfrobe — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:12:12 -0800

Interesting that you don't even need to import your music into iTunes for this to work. You just tell it which directory your music is in and it will share it. Beelzbubba, Foldershare is not a bad way to go if you want to share music files with a few close friends. Unfortunately, it's got a one thousand file limit so if you have more songs than that, you'll need to break up your library into smaller directories. That was a breaking point for me so I'm also looking for an easy solution to share files with a less than tech savvy friend.

By: 2or3whiskeysodas

2or3whiskeysodas — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:24:25 -0800

Beelzbubba, I'm not terribly tech-savvy, so maybe I'll get slapped down/educated for buying into the explanation at the Simplify Media website, but it sounds reasonable to me:

First, only computers on your approved list can interact with you. All communication between those computers is encrypted and highly secure. Second, our protocol only allows streaming from your machine. No other file operations are possible, and we do not allow remote execution of code. Finally, users can only access files within the folders you select, and we filter out all non-music files within those folders.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:33:33 -0800

Meh, the RIAA will still have their way with 'em.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:01:34 -0800

If only foobar2000 would allow UPnP so I can use it to control my Roku, the world be a better place.

By: jdfalk

jdfalk — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:07:37 -0800

what port does this thing listen on?

By: jdfalk

jdfalk — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:07:54 -0800

(yes, I read the docs...they don't say)

By: zoey08

zoey08 — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:10:43 -0800

Another interesting product along these lines, though with a slightly different goal, is MyTunesRSS, which puts up a webpage so you can access your iTunes from any browser by going to www.mytunesrss.com/yourname

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:18:34 -0800

I'm using this with a friend of mine, it's really cool. On my machine (Mac) iTunes uses 58MB real and 429 virtual, Simplify uses 17MB/370MB (for contrast Firefox used 90/400).

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:56:26 -0800

I have been using this from my iBook at home to the iMacs at work for several weeks now. It works flawlessly I've got an unused PC tower in the closet I'm getting ready to clone my iTunes library to and just leave it on 24/7 in the closet sans monitor or keyboard.

By: rmm

rmm — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:03:42 -0800

Definitely looks neat, although I'm a little skittish. Wish there was a little bit more info up there - I know they're a startup, but they could still allay fears by putting more info about it. It worked for something like Last.FM et al.

By: reblix

reblix — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:41:10 -0800

Anyone want to be my Simplify Media friend? Send an invite to spleenrock. I swear I've got good taste. You no likey, you just delete me.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:07:10 -0800

I installed Simplify Media on my Macs at home and work after reading about it in Ask MetaFilter last week and it's been working fine for me. (It doesn't seem to publish my entire--pretty big--library.)

By: knowles

knowles — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:12:20 -0800

anyone who wants to add me my account name is knowles. i like good music.

By: knowles

knowles — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:13:32 -0800

oh wait, my screen name is selwonk, my real name is knowles. d'oh!

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:37:43 -0800

I love this program. I'm sharing my library with friends all around the country. Plus, it's a good way of finding out which albums you can make people burn for you.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:39:49 -0800

spleenrock, you do--indeed--have decent taste. A little overlap with mine, but enough other stuff to be interesting to me. Thanks for adding me as a pal. One problem with this program, though. Anything downloaded from iTunes can't be shared. Dammit.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:41:56 -0800

selwonk: thanks for the add. lots of stuff I've never heard before. Cool.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:42:06 -0800

selwonk: thanks for the add. lots of stuff I've never heard before. Cool. Oh, I'm coldchef.

By: zerolucid

zerolucid — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:49:07 -0800

my simplifymedia name is "levity". thanks in advance for the adds! :)

By: Lucinda

Lucinda — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:23:18 -0800

I'm "lucinda", if anyone cares. I have lots of mashups. And Beatles.

By: gnomeloaf

gnomeloaf — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:43:16 -0800

gnomeloaf here = gnomeloaf there

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:19:50 -0800

Late to the party, but I'm rocksteady, if you want to add me.

By: czarth

czarth — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:57:49 -0800

I am digging this program, thanks! If it feels right go ahead and add me - czarth