I stumbled on this app the other day, and its a fine example of someone taking Google’s infrastructure (in this instance its Play Music app and the Android platform) and making something pretty awesome.
So what’s the app? Titled (rather un-sexily) Cast To UPnP/DLNA for GMusic, the app turns your Android device – and specifically the Play Music app – into a UPnP/DLNA host. In plain english, this means you can play your music from your phone (and this includes the All Access streaming part of Play Music) to any UPnP/DLNA receiver – like your Xbox360, a Sonos, XBMC etc etc.
Continue reading “Got an Android device? Using Google Music? Then get this app:”
Like most geeks of my ilk, I have a few devices that plug into my TV and connect me to the net. With my Apple TV I can watch Netflix and do various others things. Having jailbroken it, I can also run XBMC now, which finally makes the device more worthy of its pricetag. Elsewhere I have an Xbox 360 which can also stream Netflix, and additionally can stream Sky, BBC iPlayer and various other on-demand services. Generally, that’s the one that sees the most use here. 
It seems inevitable these days that we’ll be changing our phones at least once every two years, if not every year. As a consequence then, most of us will no doubt have some spare handsets lying around. In my case, its a couple of old Android phones and an old iPod Touch. 
A few years back I invested in my first smartphone: an HTC Magic. At first I loved it, but one event in particular pissed me off beyond all belief, namely when not 3 months after I bought it, Android upgraded to a new iteration and I couldn’t install it on my handset. Nonetheless I did persevere and upgraded a year or so later to an HTC Desire. As a handset that was much better than the Magic – but once again the fragmentation issue raised its head and this time it was the last straw for me: I switched to an iPhone 3S and since then I’ve remained an Apple phone person. Over time I also bought into the Apple ecosystem that bit more: I have an iPad, a jailbroken Apple TV2, and I use a MacBook Air laptop.