ORB

At various times in the past I have used the following tools to both access my media remotely or share them with friends and family.

1. For Audio Broadcast - Shoutcast+Winamp
2. For TV/Video streaming - Microsoft Media Encoder
3. For Photo sharing - Local FTP/Web/File Shares or public photo-shares such as Flickr/Yahoo

But installing and configuring the above tools is not always easy. For a average home user its geeky, technical and can be frustrating especially if you have to configure firewall ports, figure out bandwidth settings, encoders etc. I had always wondered why noone has not yet come up with a single application to do all of the above. Maybe XP should have had a movie broadcaster along with its movie maker. Maybe it was a strategic decision with creating markets for their Media Center PC.
Then about a year or so ago I heard about SlingBox and few weeks ago I even checked it out at the local Radio Shack. Cool little gadget. I got the feeling its well poised to be the next Internet Tivo.

Untill I stumbled across ORB.COM on Scott Hanselman's blog. Its a great alternative to the SlingBox and does all of the above in a sleek software only solution.

Within minutes I had it running and was able to broadcast a movie, webcam, listen to my mp3 collection and view my photos remotely.

Check it out. http://www.orb.com