[surferboy]

I bring my iPod to work, hook to my laptop and share to the computer next to me with nice speakers- but no firewire hookup. Also, it makes much more sense for me to store 30Gigs of music on an iPod than on my computer hard drive. The problem is, iTunes will let you share music on your hard drive, but not on you iPod. Well, I found a nifty little App that will allow you to share you iPod music over your local network called MusicPublisher. The problem is: I can't figure out exactly how to work it.

In this app, You specify a port that is different than the one itunes uses. The rest is pretty darn easy. My problem: I am little unsure on port forwarding.

I am testing this at home: Linksys router and seperate Linsys access point. Router hooked up to a pc, an imac and the seperate access point (for wireless use with my powerbook).

Setup: powerbook hooked to iPod with iMac trying to access iPods contents over local network. I set the port to a random number, hit "publish" and try to access the music from the other computer. The iPod shows up in the shared music list, but I get an error message saying that the shared music library is not accessible. It says it may be caused by a firewall. It then tells me to check and make sure that firewall software is set to allow communication on port xxxx (the one that I specified). I have messed around with port forwarding, port triggering, etc.- no dice.

Does anyone want to play with this app and see if they can get it to work? If you can't find it, I post the URL.

[surferboy]

Solution was obvious- hate to look so dumb. I didn't think I had a firewall set on either computer, but as it turns out, I had one set on one of the computers! I allowed communication on that port in network preferences and it works.

Now, the trick will be to see if I can get this to work on PC's at work.

If anyone wants to play with this, that would be great!

[surferboy]

I had some erratic behavior from my ipod and powerbook one day after using this app. I have not idea if the app is related. Has anyone else played with this app yet?

Thanks.

[mishap]

Sounds interesting... i'll recommend it to someone at work and see how it works out for him.

[himself]

What would be ideal is a little doodad that lets you mount your iPod as an external disk, so iTunes thinks it's just another volume, instead of just an iPod... I figure, that way it would be easier to access your music over a network, whether local or wide area. But this so solution sounds good.

[Wiskedjak]

You might find THIS interesting.

[surferboy]

That link is actually where I got the idea. I think the erratic behavior referred to above was because I did not properly eject my iPod yesterday. Things are great now- after reset of the iPod.

The system works great at work sharing over LAN with Mac to PC's. I think you are able to share cd's, ipods or whatever mounted volume you wish with this app.

It really is a nice app. The only strange thing is that it does not seem to want to share about 50 of my songs. I have not looked to see if these are my itunes purchases or not?

Anyhow, this app is great so far.