Turn Your Computer Into a Streaming Music Server With Jinzora
If toting an iPod or laptop everywhere for the sole purpose of accessing your music strikes you as a bad case of hardware overload, then have a look at Jinzora. The streaming media server allows you access your music collection from any device that can run a web browser (and, for optimal enjoyment, has speakers).
The Simple Help blog recently put up a nice tutorial for Mac users looking to get started with Jinzora. For Windows users, Lifehacker has a how to available.
Jinzora is reasonably lightweight and only requires a basic AMP stack — Apache, MySQL and PHP — which most OSes ship with these days. There are a couple of PHP modules you may need to install, most notably the LAME module for downsampling when it’s needed.
But if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty in a few configuration files, and perhaps a MySQL installation if you’re on a Mac, setting up Jinzora isn’t too bad. One thing not covered in the Simple Help tutorial is setting up a static DNS address, which you may need to do if you’re running Jinzora from a home server. Check out FreeDNS, which can handle the dynamic to static DNS bridge for you.
Other streaming music servers include options like SlimServer, which we’ve looked at in the past.
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