I’ve recently come across two killer apps that I absolutely LOVE. I’ll share the first one with you today and the other one tomorrow.

The first one is Simplify Media. It adds great new functionality to your iTunes. Unless you have multiple computers at home running iTunes or you work in an office setting where you would be with many other users who may have iTunes running, you may have noticed that you can see other people’s iTunes library. In the preferences, you can set up music sharing for yourself and tell your iTunes to look for others as well. You can also tell iTunes what folders you are willing to share. (Unfortunately, you cannot listen to someone’s music if they bought it from iTunes, thanks to DRM. However, if they put the music on their computer by ripping it off a CD, happened to buy non-DRM music or if they have actually activated your computer to listen to their music… by entering their user name and password… then you can enjoy their music)

The downside has been the iTunes only lets you share music over a local network. We use VPN all the time at Cross Timbers. I can be home and VPN connect to the office and to everyone else in the office, I appear to be in the office as well. All our campus sites are connected by a VPN link so that people at other offices appear to all be at one place. However, iTunes library sharing doesn’t work over a VPN connection… you have to actually be there. Not anymore… thanks to simplifymedia. Once you install simplify media on your computer, you can invite other people (up to 30) to share your library. If they accept, their library will show up in your network regardless of where they are and what network they are on. Now that I’ve installed it, I always seem to have 2-4 other library’s in my network. Now I can enjoy other people’s music when I’m tired of mine.

I’m sure you can incorporate this into ministry use somewhere, but I’m using this more for fun… and it seems to me that my happiness affects my ministry and all that I do.