Vibestreamer: Stream your mp3's to yourself...
I've been checking out this cool new (to me) app over the weekend, Vibestreamer. It allows you to turn your PC into a streaming mp3 server with private login.
It wasn't particularly difficult to get it working, after I opened a port in my router for it and also allowed the app permissions in both my Sygate Personal Firewall and Norton Worm Protection.
Others with less virtual-Hazmat-suit 'Net access configurations will make quicker work of it. In fact to use it you merely start it up, Add Users to Groups, setup your directory Sharing and optional Security rules (IP filtering, etc) and access your site at IPaddress:portnumber. Couldn't be easier.
Next I "strolled" over to FreeDNS.org (since I have dynamic IP's at the house) and signed up for some goofy free subdomain names which upon signing up automatically configured themselves to use my home computer's IP address. Good stuff.
Where I ran into some snags was actually when I tried to use it, at work. Although eventually I was able to connect and successfully streamed a song to myself, it required a phone call to the wife to reboot Vibestreamer. I have a hunch of what might fix it, but more testing tomorrow at work will be required (in between the act of working of course :~]).
In any case, I recommend to "the masses" that people give this free utility a try. It certainly worth the price of admission to say the least, and if you can get it working, this is even easier way to listen to your music than lugging your iPod to work. Instead simply dial into your home computer with Firefox and listen to your entire collection with Vibestreamer!
***Update, The Next Day***
Still having trouble connecting from work. Hoping to resolve without involving Dave, our friendly neighborhood IT guy.
***Hmmm.. well, kind of worked, for awhile. A lot of single frame refreshes and such nonsense eventually yielded a couple CD's worth of mp3 streams. Nice, but needs more tweaking. Currently going to try increasing number of connections per user. I think things might be getting hung up somewhere by all these security layers between myself and work.
**** Final Update. I have been using this everyday at work for months now. All the hangups I was having turned out to be related to network issues at work, which have since been sorted out (they upgraded some hardware that was long overdue for it).
This program rules, load entire directories of music at once, stream your entire collection to yourself. It's like having your own radio station, with on demand music. Four freaking stars for Vibestreamer. Huzzah!
PS: For the record, I am not affiliated Vibestreamer™ in any way, and users take all responsibility for whatever happens to their machines if they use this software! lol
