Pocketster "Pocket P2P" Application Released

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.simeda.com/pocketster.html' target='_blank'>http://www.simeda.com/pocketster.html</a><br /><br /></div>Simeda has released Pocketster, which had gained some notoriety under its prerelease name "Pocket Rendezvous".<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20040617-Pocketster.jpg" /><br /><br />Before people start making the invariable comparison to Napster based on its name, it's worth pointing out that Pocketster is essentially two things: a web server for your Pocket PC, which enables the publication of any content you want, and a peer-to-peer discovery tool that enables you to detect Pocket PC and other Rendezvous-based devices (if you've never heard of Rendezvous, you can check out Apple's page on it <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/rendezvous/">here</a>).<br /><br />As such, it's a tool for exchanging any content. I particularly like this scenario, as described on the website: <i>"Carry your important presentations or other files in your pocket and have them instantly available on your wireless corporate network simply by browsing for your "pocketable" web server using Rendezvous"</i> (although "corporate network support" will require the up-and-coming Pro version). People are invariably going to talk about the potential to exchange media content with random people, but to me, it's just another data exchange tool, much like Bluetooth's OBEX but based on TCP/IP and geared towards WiFi or other high-speed wireless solutions.

[jcsickz]

take THAT RIAA!

[foldedspace]

So the free version won't work on a regular network?

[Janak Parekh]

So the free version won't work on a regular network?
I haven't played with it, so I don't know the full details. I was just quoting the website.

--janak

[ctmagnus]

It seems to me that this is essentially a web server. If so, then it's a little easier to set up than Pocket IIS And A Wireless Network For An iPaq (http://www.angrycoder.com/article.aspx?cid=11&y=2001&m=10&d=18).

[ctmagnus]

Also,

BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD: Please note that the Basic version of Pocketster (the one you can download below) works by creating an ad-hoc WiFi network on your Pocket PC. But in order to prevent the Pocket PC Zeroconf utility from reconnecting you to your preferred WiFi network instead of the ad-hoc network Pocketster uses, Pocketster will _remove_ your current preferred network settings before it adds its own. Pocketster Pro (that will be available in a few weeks) will allow you to join existing networks, without creating an ad-hoc one.

(Emphasis mine)

[Stephen Beesley]

Also,

BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD: Please note that the Basic version of Pocketster (the one you can download below) works by creating an ad-hoc WiFi network on your Pocket PC. But in order to prevent the Pocket PC Zeroconf utility from reconnecting you to your preferred WiFi network instead of the ad-hoc network Pocketster uses, Pocketster will _remove_ your current preferred network settings before it adds its own. Pocketster Pro (that will be available in a few weeks) will allow you to join existing networks, without creating an ad-hoc one.

(Emphasis mine)

OUCH - I do not like the sound of that one little bit...

[drazvan]

Hello everyone,

I'm the author of Pocketster, so let me explain a bit. It is true, Pocketster removes your preferred wireless network settings. Unfortunately it needs to do so to add its own ad-hoc network and connect to it. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the Wireless ZeroConf that's bundled with Windows Mobile 2003. We are working on a solution for this, but I honestly don't know when it will be released.

In the meantime, we will release our Pocketster Pro that will no longer establish an ad-hoc network but instead allow you to join any existing wireless hotspots and search for devices on that network.

From our experience, there are mainly two types of WiFi Pocket PC users: we'll call the first type "the corporates" (have their PocketPCs set up to join a corporate network, WEP/WPA keys and everything and they rarely (if ever) join a free WiFi access point). The second type is the "hotspotters" (join whatever WiFi access point is available in the area, with or without a WEP key, don't usually have a preferred network). The "hotspotters" include travellers and wardrivers :).

For the "corporates", we will release the Pocketster Pro that will allow them to use Pocketster on their corporate networks. The "hotspotters" do not usually care about preffered networks, they just want a connection, so removing their preferred list is not that much of a problem.

I realize that there are a few categories in-between the "corporates" and the "hotspotters". Those are probably the ones that will be most affected by the current behaviour of the Pocketster. As I said, we're working on it and hope to have a new version out soon.

Cheers,
Razvan

[drazvan]

We have just released our Pocketster Pro. It is now available for purchase for EUR 14.95 on our website http://www.simeda.com/pocketster.html . We have also updated Pocketster Basic (the free version) to support infrastructure networks (access-point based), not just ad-hoc networks. That was a feature we were originally planning to include in Pocketster Pro only, but we've had so many requests that we decided to just offer it for free. Pocketster Pro allows you to change the document root for the builtin server. But the most interesting new feature (and only available in Pocketster Pro) is the iPod Module. The iPod Module allows you to connect your Pocket PC to an iPod (you need a Pocket PC with a USB Host port and the proper USB cables) and stream music directly from the iPod. The module parses the iPod Music Database and creates HTML files for each of the playlists. From those HTML files you can preview (stream) or download the music files themselves. We have a nice step-by-step article with pictures here: http://www.simeda.com/pocketster-ipod.html ("Turn your iPod into a wireless jukebox with Pocketster Pro").

Thanks,
Razvan (razvan.dragomirescu(at)simeda.com)

[Janak Parekh]

The iPod Module allows you to connect your Pocket PC to an iPod (you need a Pocket PC with a USB Host port and the proper USB cables) and stream music directly from the iPod.
Yeah, I saw this, which is pretty neat. We'll post over the next few days. :)

--janak