Friday, April 22, 2005

Kyle Copeland has more than 90GB worth of digital music stored on various networked computers and Apple Computer iPods. The problem was finding a convenient way to play it.

Airport Express devices plugged into various power outlets throughout his home allowed him to wirelessly play selections from his vast music collection on stereos and speakers in different rooms.

But every time the 29-year-old Marlboro, Mass., engineer wanted to change a song playing from his iTunes library over his wireless network, he had to walk over to his computer. Sitting in front of his television one day, Copeland had a realization: "That's when I thought, 'Most places where there are speakers there's a television.'"

So Copeland and fellow engineer John Brosnan created iSeeiTunes, a program that lets users control the songs played over a network via their TV.

With more than 5,000 users since its March launch, iSeeiTunes has become a relative hit among the TiVo developer community, garnering high ratings in forums dedicated to TiVo applications. The program's popularity speaks both to its usefulness and the creative potential of developers, which TiVo hopes to harness as it attempts to transform its service into more than for just digital video recording.