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Xdrive's Virtual iPod an idea before its time |
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Monday, 14 February 2005 |
Xdrive's Virtual iPod an idea before its time
San Jose Mercury News (subscription) - USA
It's not often that we sing the praises of products that are glitchy, have major
limitations and require special software to run.
Those are all problems that Xdrive -- www.xdrive.com -- is facing with its new
Virtual iPod service, which promises to deliver the iPod experience without the
need for a $250 to $500 MP3 player.
That was enough to catch our attention. And even though the initial Virtual iPod
service seemed to be more trouble than it was worth, the promise of what it
likely will be able to deliver in the not-so-distant future makes it worth the
effort.
You might remember Xdrive, one of the companies in the early days of the
Internet that pitched paid Web-based storage for backing up files. The company
recently added a free music feature -- basically a folder where users can store
their MP3 music files for access from any Web connection. Subscribers to the
Xdrive service pay $9.95 a month for the initial 5 gigabytes of storage.
Here's the trick to the Virtual iPod service: Using those MP3 files, create a
custom playlist in the standard .m3uformat and transfer that playlist file to
your phone. When you launch that playlist from your Web-enabled phone, the songs
stream from your Xdrive folder to your phone. Plug a headset into your phone and
-- voilà! -- you've got gigabytes of music at your fingertips, just like you
would with an iPod.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 27 February 2005 )
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