Signal - The Ultimate Remote Control for Your PC's Media Player

The main addition to Signal 1.1 was the ability to control AirTunes speakers, something I was very happy to finally be able to offer as it was by far the most requested feature over the life of the application. Of course, with this implemented one of the new most requested features is “show which speakers are actually active!”. This is something I’d very much like to see added myself, and the reason it’s not supported stems from the same limitation of the iTunes programming interface that caused AirTunes control to be delayed for so long.

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The Alloysoft Google Group has just gone live, providing a central and easily searchable forum for discussion of Signal and any other Alloysoft products that may appear on the horizon. Post your comments or questions, talk to other users, or just let us know what you think!

Signal 1.1.1 is now available and offers fixes for a variety of minor issues, with a few items of note:

• Albums are now sorted by disc number before track number
• When adding or playing an artist with only one album tracks are now sorted properly
• Resolved an issue that prevented the remote speakers menu from appearing for some Pocket PC users

The update is available now via software update or direct download, with the full list of changes available in the release notes.

Bonjour is a fantastic networking technology that supports automatic discovery of devices and services on your network. It’s how shared libraries and remote speakers automatically appear and disappear in iTunes without needing to configure anything, and it allows Bonjour-aware devices to connect to each other using just a name.

One of the handy but less obvious features of Signal is the ability to access the web interface from your iPhone or iPod touch using your computer’s Bonjour name instead of its IP address. Since not all devices support Bonjour, to ensure maximum compatibility Signal currently displays a web access URL using your computer’s IP address, but you can still access the interface using the Bonjour name. In the future the application will be updated to display both, with some guidance as to which is appropriate for your device. For now, here’s how to access Signal using Bonjour.

Mac

First you’ll need to find you computer’s network name. To do that, open System Preferences and click Sharing. Near the top of the screen you’ll see a message similar to “Computers on your local network can access your computer at:”. The name that follows is your computer’s network name.

To access Signal using Bonjour, just replace the IP address portion of the web address shown in the Signal application window with the network name and enter this address into your iPhone or iPod (you can leave out the http:// part):

That’s it! As long as your computer name remains the same you’ll be able to access Signal at this address no matter what the IP address is.

Easy access from other Macs

In addition, with Signal 1.1 it’s now much easier to access the web interface from other Macs on your network using Safari. Here’s how to do it:

1. Click on the Show All Bookmarks icon in the Bookmarks Bar
2. Click on the Bonjour collection
3. Double-click on the entry for Signal in the list

This will open the Signal web interface without you needing to type anything at all. Bonjour will automatically keep this list up-to-date so you’ll always be able to access any Signal server running in your network from here.

Windows

Although Windows does not support Bonjour by itself, Windows users can take advantage of the same discovery capabilities by installing Bonjour for Windows. Once it’s up and running, the first thing you’ll need to do is find your computer’s network name. To do that:

1. Click on the Start Menu
2. Right click on My Computer (XP) or Computer (Vista) and select Properties
3. If using Windows XP, click on the Computer Name tab

On the dialog that appears you’ll find your computer’s network name. To access Signal using this name, replace the IP address portion of the web address shown in the Signal application window with the network name displayed in the dialog, followed by “.local” (it’s a Bonjour thing). Then enter this combined address into your iPhone or iPod like so (you can leave out the http:// part):

That’s it! As long as your computer name remains the same you’ll be able to access Signal at this address no matter what the IP address is.