I’ll be moving house shortly. Actually, it’s been “shortly” for 6 months or so now. The builders are making progress but they are quite possibly the most incompetent planners I have ever seen. No need to criticize government IT when there are builders around. The latest date I have is the 7th, or maybe 8th, “handover” date yet – and it’s in a week. But, this last weekend, I tried to have somem furniture delivered a bit early and they wouldn’t allow it. So maybe it’s shortly and a bit.
One of the things I’ve had done is a wired network in every room – full ethernet – along with sound capability in every room (control point and speakers). I haven’t bought the sound setup yet so I’ve been polling around for what might work nicely. Before I make a major purchase, one of the wireless gadgets might be interesting though. I came across Squeezebox via Dave Winer and then Scott Rosenberg. I’ve seen Roku before (thanks to my friend Felix who has one) and this looks to be an interesting alternative. Of course, they can only be bought in the states. Given how much spare bandwidth there is in the average wireless network, it would be a shame not to fill it up by beaming music all over the place.
On a related point, while I was in the States the other day, I came across a company that’s sort of in the streaming music/video business – BravoBrava. These guys are worth a look – the pitch is that wherever your music and video is (even your Tivo), you can access it via any broadband connection, without having to worry about leaving your system at home open to the outside world. It was pretty neat to take a photo with my camera phone and then have it on my PC 30 seconds later, available for viewing on my Ipaq that was Wifi to the ‘net separately. Any device, any location; very impressive. I hope it works out for them.