Don’t want to make Apple richer by 99 USD?

You already own the latest 4X smart TV, an Xbox 360, a PlayStation, an impressive AV receiver with an equally impressive set of speakers and one or more iOS devices. Now the audiophile in you has a desire to play the music collection on your iOS device wirelessly to your 5.1 or a 7.2 AV receiver and enjoy it thru the carefully placed speakers all around your living room.

The only solution which seems to give you the result requires a minimum investment of 99 USD. You would need to get an Apple TV, unless of course you can convince yourself to replace your existing AV receiver with a new one which has built in Airplay support, like the Denon AVR-1912 or Pioneer VSX-1021-K, both of which would set you back by at least a 500 USD.

If you did convince yourself, I would doubt if you were successful in convincing your wife. If you weren’t and you still looking at alternatives read on...

Bluetooth Devices

You could get yourself a Bluetooth device like the Belkin F8Z492TTP Bluetooth Music Receiver or the Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter for Bluetooth Audio Devices. These devices can be connected to the Audio Input of your AV receiver.  Once you have successfully paired your iPhone with one of these Bluetooth devices, the device would be listed as an airplay device on the music application of your iPhone/iPad. This would let you stream the music from your Apple device over Bluetooth to the AV receiver and enjoy the music thru the speakers connected to the receiver. These Bluetooth devices are available on amazon for less than 40 USD. However as you are aware the distance between the two paired Bluetooth devices has to be less than 20 feet for reliable playback.

iOS Application

If you are still feeling tightfisted and don’t want to spend even 40 dollars, you could still get the functionality by spending just 1.99 USD, only if you happen to already own a DLNA device or even an Xbox. FullBlast available on the App store is the poor man’s airplay alternative. It is as of now the only application which lets you control music playback directly when streaming to an Xbox or PS3. Except for a small delay in response when streaming to an Xbox the application works pretty well. The steps to configure the app and get it working are available on the Apple website.

Apple TV

Well you might be wondering why the Apple TV costs 99 USD when a 1.99 USD application can stream music over the wireless. The Apple TV does much more than just let you stream music over your wireless network. It can play music, movies, videos and photos from your apple device to your TV. It can also play movies and TV shows from Netflix and Hulu Plus, browse videos from YouTube and Vimeo and much more (not available in certain countries). It can mirror your iPad screen on your TV as well.

Did I just give you enough reasons to convince yourself to dig into your pocket and pull out a 100 dollar bill for the Apple TV?  

 

Feel Lucky, Wonderful, Trendy, Playful, Stellar, Hungry etc. with Google.

Google has replaced the decade old “I am feeling lucky” button on the Google home page with a button which changes text when you hover over it to “I am feeling wonderful”, “I am feeling hungry” etc. Each of these adjectives gives you a different search result.

The very familiar “I am feeling lucky” button since its introduction would skip the search result and redirect your browser to the first page on the search result. This feature was made redundant after Google learnt to peep into your mind and predict what you were thinking with the Google instant feature couple of years ago. Google instant would start displaying results as soon as you have entered the first letter and would keep updating as you keep typing the rest of your query.

If you keen on trying this new feature, you will have to go to the google.com website as this feature is not available on to the regional Google pages like google.ae or google.co.in etc. To force your browser to stick to the google.com page and not redirect you to the regional page type in http://www.google.com/ncr in the address bar. Now if you hover the mouse over the “I am feeling lucky” button it would change to one of the new variants of this button. Each of the new adjectives delivers a different result which in most cases is using a different Google application or project.

I am feeling hungry button would display you a list of restaurants close to your location. If you have used http://www/google.com/ncr the results would not be accurate as you have asked Google to ignore your location and use the .com website.

I am feeling trendy button would show you the hot searches on Google relevant to your location.

I am feeling artistic takes you, to the Google Art Project. The page doesn’t like the fact that you are using IE and suggests you use Google Chrome.

I am feeling wonderful takes, you to the World Wonders Project.

I am feeling Puzzled takes, one to the Google a day website.

And so on… If you are feeling adventurous fire up your browser and try this new Google feature.