Webware

The new chat function lets users talk to their friends about the music they're borrowing from them.

(Credit: Simplify Media)

As the self-imposed deadline of June approaches, Simplify Media remains in beta for Windows, Mac, and mobile users. The iTunes and Winamp plug-in that lets you share your music with friends has, however, added three new features: chat, a "now playing" message that displays what your friends are listening to from your collection, and a built-in password reset for the forgetful among us.

The chat feature is the strongest, allowing you to directly communicate with friends, family, and even enemies with whom you've shared your music. It's a great way to give and get some direct feedback on what you're currently listening to, almost like a personalized mixtape with live commentary.

The "now playing" message pops up in your Media List, and is a reasonable (if somewhat navel-gazing) way to see what your friends like from your list. It'd be better if it kept statistics, but it still dovetails nicely with the chat feature. Nothing like interrupting a friend getting their groove on by asking them what they think about the music.

One of the most promising freeware programs of 2007 was Simplify Media, a plug-in for iTunes and Winamp on both Windows and Mac that lets users share their music collections with friends and themselves via the Internet. The application is expecting an official release in June, but until then you'll have to appease your appetite for music with these beta builds.

New options in Simplify Media give users more flexibility.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The program still eats a voluminous amount of virtual memory--near the 100MB range, on average--but if you're not using a lot of other system processes it makes for an attractive way to get your tunes across the world, or just to another room.

The expanded settings panel will be greatly appreciated by users who don't have their music files stored in the default iTunes or Winamp directories, or want to keep a separate collection of tunes for sharing in a separate folder. A new option lets you set the music folder location, and separately share iTunes or Winamp playlists. Users can make further tweaks to start-up behavior, and you'll now see a tally of songs being shared next to your friend's computer names.

Additional improvements for Mac users let them run Simplify Media with Front Row on Tiger and Leopard, and the application can now be run from the Menu Bar instead of the dock, but only in OS X 10.5.2. Sixty-four bit Windows Vista users should now see support for the application, as well.

Finally, the publisher notes that iPhone and other smartphone users should see an official release, also in June.

Once installed, Simplify Media will appear in your list of iPhone apps.

(Credit: Simplify Media)

Simplify Media--a free desktop application for Windows or Mac OS X that lets you stream your digital music or your friends' from iTunes or Winamp (Simplify Media covered previously)--today released a new version of its software that is developed to run on the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

Rather than function as a conventional iPhone app, (i.e. a Web app built for Safari), the new program is standalone software that requires a "jailbroken" iPhone to work.

The ability to listen to your entire music collection or your friends' anywhere your iPhone or iPod Touch has Wi-Fi access could certainly be very popular, since iPhones max out at 8GB storage and iPod Touch only allows up to 16GB. However, Simplify Media for the iPhone is still in alpha release, so don't get your hopes up too high yet.

Using a jailbroken iPhone with 1.0.2 firmware, we were able to access a remote library and play songs fine, but there were major functionality limits and stability issues. There's no way to sort your streaming music; back and forward buttons don't function completely; and we encountered some crashing issues.

A quick e-mail conversation with Simplify Media co-founder Paul Joyce seems to indicate that most of our stability issues were because of the outdated 1.0.2 firmware. Paul explains the problems with using 1.0.2:

"Although the early development of our peer-to-peer framework was done with 1.0.2, once the 1.1.1 jailbreak was perfected we upgraded. All of the (complicated) tie-ins with Quicktime to enable continuous playing were done with the newer firmware (1.1.1 and 1.1.2), explaining your problems. We have our personal phones (for testing) and a few extra phones and an iPod Touch for development, but, unfortunately, not enough to support the earlier firmware."

Once Simplify Media is running, you can explore your friends' music collections.

(Credit: Simplify Media)

Despite the currently limited feature set, Simplify Media is a great idea that will catch on in one form or another. Paul also mentioned that sort control, next song, and previous song haven't been coded yet but are planned for the next release. The company must definitely be champing at the bit for an official SDK for the iPhone, which is expected in February 2008. It's quite curious that the Simplify Media iPhone app isn't Web-based, considering the popularity of SeeQPod; also, anyone with an iPhone will have to break their service contract to even install Simplify Media.

For more on Simplify Media for iPhone or iPod Touch, visit the iPhone page on the Simplify Media Web site. If you're not prepared to jailbreak your iPhone or install prerelease software on your fancy new gadget, watch this Simplify Media video below that offers a tour of the mobile app. The software currently supports WMA, AAC, and MP3 formats for streaming audio.

Note: Download.com Editor Jason Parker contributed to this article, including most of the hands-on testing of the Simplify Media for iPhone app.

Although it hasn't exactly exploded into the mainstream music-listening population at large, the music-sharing application Simplify Media (download it for Windows or Mac) is a fan favorite of several CNET editors and staffers.

Simplify Media has always allowed you to listen to your iTunes playlists on the road or share them with friends. Yesterday, it announced support for the popular digital-music jukebox app Winamp for Windows.

When you install Simplify Media, you must choose whether it will work with Winamp or iTunes playlists. Those of us who occasionally use both apps and thought we might be able to consolidate playlists are out of luck. You can, however, change your preferred playlist program after installation. ... Read more

Featured on this week's Real Deal podcast: Synchronizing two computers. If you want to know how to keep yourself sane if you regularly use more than one PC, tune into this show for a rundown of my tips on how to keep files, bookmarks, and e-mail synchronized over the Web.

Products mentioned:

• FolderShare
• LogMeIn
• SimplifyMedia
• Orb
• FoxMarks
• Del.icio.us
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets
.


If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

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Today's discovery: SimplifyMedia, a very handy media-sharing service. It lets friends listen to your iTunes music library from their computers, no matter which network you or they are on. It's even useful if you have no friends: if you use more than one computer and want to be able to access your music on all of them, SimplifyMedia does it.

Connect to friends' libraries, and your own, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

At the moment, the service works only with iTunes, and most iTunes users probably know that iTunes already allows streaming between computers. The hitch is that iTunes restricts sharing to a local network, so music can be shared in a building, but not across the world. You can hack around this with a virtual network product like Hamachi, but that's beyond the technical reach of most people. Orb also lets you share your media libraries, but I've found it buggy, and the browser-based interface is slow.

SimplifyMedia makes things automatic if you want to share across the Internet. You can invite up to 30 other people into your library, and see their tracks as well. As I said, what I find most useful about the product is that it gives me easy access to my home desktop's iTunes library from my work laptop, no matter where it may be. I keep a large music and podcast library on my desktop at home, and this tool makes it easy for me to access it from iTunes on my laptop, even when I'm at work or on another network elsewhere. It's like a Slingbox for music.

The service keeps things legal by allowing only streaming, not copying, and only to a small group. Also, only you can listen to your own iTunes-purchased, DRM-protected tunes. The Simplify team is working to loosen up that restriction.

SimplifyMedia-shared libraries show up inside iTunes.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

My big criticism has to do with access control. It's binary--when you let people see and play your library, they have complete access to all your nonprotected music, just as you do. I'd like a better way to restrict visibility for people I've given access to, while maintaining full access for myself. Also, I found a technical conflict between the beta software and my home's media storage drive--I could only have one working at a time. There are also reports of VPN incompatibilities, but none popped up in my tests.

This application is a natural for the Facebook community. SimplifyMedia co-founder Paul Joyce says the team is already working on it.

See also TUAW's interesting history lesson on iTunes sharing.