orb and evdo heaven...

[schettj]

Not new news here, many of you know about orb (http://orb.com) but if you've somehow been living in a cave and missed it, I just wanted to put another plug for it here.

The 2.0 version is now getting pretty stable, and is even better then the old 1.0 version. You need a Windows PC, a reasonably fast (uplink) internet connection, and some media to stream. Orb runs as a server on your pc - orb.com (free!) gives you a web page view of that media - you can search, make playlists, etc, and stream the stuff from your home PC to, well, just about any internet connected device that can play Real Media, Windows Media, etc. formats.

On the PPC it works spiffy with tcpmp via the EVDO network. You'll want an unlimited data plan, for sure, as this can burn man GB of data use in a very short time. You'll also want either an extended batter or access to power, you'll be running full out so without some power assist you're looking at 3 hours or so total battery life. I've got an car adapter, so I just run off that if I'm streaming in my car.

My setup: I've got a PC acting as a PVR (running http://gbpvr.com) with 400GB worth of video - I have a Linux box as my home server, it has about 600GB of video and music on it as well. I run a vmware XP virtual image on the linux box to host the orb server, serving all that video and mp3 music.

Today's drive in: Stone Temple Pilots, The Who, Soundgarden... the other day I was watching "Who's Line is it Anyway" while the dentist was cleaning my teeth