Play that Funky Music, Smart Phone

Erica Ogg over on C/Net News.com says that SlingMedia is working hard to develop technology that would allow Apple TV users to stream your iTunes tracks to your mobile via their SlingBox device. Since SlingMedia sells a piece of software called SlingPlayer that works on Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian, it should be a pretty nifty solution for those with smart phones.

Now this sounds unusually hard and complex, and might have an appeal for those with D.I.Y. tendencies. I prefer the simplicity of iPod over listening to tunes on my mobile phone, mostly because I want to save the battery for talking. Now if you insist on listening to music on your phone, there are far simpler and less complicated solutions out on the market, which are not bad for the price – about $15 a month.

For instance, Real Networks’ Rhapsody service. The only problem is that it works on Nokia N95, N91 and N800 devices. The monthly subscription service allows you to load music of your choice to any of these three devices. We tried it on the N95 and N800 and it worked as advertised, though we had to use a Windows PC. All we had to do was follow Darla Mack’s instructions. Rhapsody doesn’t work with Mac OS X based computers. (Nokia 800 users get the first month free of Rhapsody service that costs $15 a month.)

Support for more devices is coming. It would be ideal to have this work with the N73, which in our humble opinion is the best Nokia music phone. A tip for Real: support Sony Ericsson and Samsung as soon as possible, or cede market to Yahoo Music or Napster, which has partnered with AT&T (Wireless) for mobile music services.

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