TECH: Winamp Lets You Take Over Anyone's Boombox

Remember those house parties you went to that only played lame-ass James Blunt songs? How you'd be having a great time only for someone to get on the stereo with a fat stack of Billboard Top 40 Hits compilations? Fret no more, you big music-nazi, the latest version of Winamp will reportedly let you play your MP3 collection from your home PC to any internet-connected PC, PS3, Wii or even mobile phone, provided you have your home PC connected to the internet with Winamp open on the desktop. More after the jump. Oh yes, parties are suddenly an option again.

The product is relatively simple; users store their music files on a PC with Winamp running. Then they enable the application for remote access. After setting that up, users fire up the Wii or PlayStation 3 web browser and head to http://winamp.com/remote to sign in. As long as the host PC is on, has Winamp running and connected to the Internet, the user can allow a friend to stream music and video from that machine too. If the user was on the road, at a party, over a friend's or trapped in a coffee house with bad music, they can access their tunes remotely from anywhere with an Internet connection. Gamers with old PCs can either use their current PC to stream the media or take an older PC (at least with a 2.4 GHz CPU) and use it as a makeshift media center. (source)

This is likely to open your PC up to resemble mosquito fly netting in terms of security, so be warned...