Access your media collection from your handheld - Mobile Minute

For Remote, enter the name of the computer you want to access, along with a shared folder. For example, "\\my computer\music" if you've got a shared folder named "music," on your machine named "my computer." For the local name, you can put anything you want, but I'd recommend using similar names on your local and remote machines so that you don't get too confused.

Repeat for each folder you'd like to access. Now when you use GSFinder+ or any other file explorer, including the default Windows file explorer or Total Commander you'll be able to browse your shared network folder and open pictures, music, or mp3s with your default programs such as Windows Media Player or TCPMP.

But what if you want to access your media when you're away from home?

Orb

I won't go into too much detail about Orb, because we've covered it before. Basically, Orb lets you stream media from your PC over the web to pretty much any computer or mobile device with a web browser. You can also use it to browse files on your PC, read RSS feeds or browse online videos.

Orb has two components. A file that runs on your PC and a browser interface that scales well for mobile devices. When you install Orb on your PC, you can choose folders with your photos, music, videos, and other documents that you'd like to access over the web. You can even configure Orb to let you stream live television if your computer has a TV tuner card.

Orb transcodes audio and video on the fly to optimize content for your internet connection. While that makes accessing your media on the go a snap, it can be a bit of a resource hog on your home computer, so make sure you've got a fairly speedy processor and a hefty amount of RAM before you go streaming live TV.

LogMeIn

While Orb lets you access media stored in shared folders on your home PC, sometimes you want complete access to your PC. That's where LogMeIn comes in.

Logmein lets you control your computer remotely over the web. While there are other ways of doing this (such as using a VNC client), LogMeIn is easy to use and includes a free version. The commercial version of the software lets you transfer files between computers, but LogMeIn Free is plenty powerful in its own right, and it includes a great mobile client.

While LogMeIn won't let you stream music or video (it's just not fast enough, and doesn't include audio), if you just need to double check that shopping list text file on your desktop, it'll do. Or if you want to add directories to Orb while you're away from home, LogMeIn could come in handy.

Once you sign up for a free account, you're directed to download a small program to install on any machine you want to be able to access remotely. It takes up few resources when not in use, so you can leave it running pretty much all the time. In order to access your machine, you just login to LogMeIn from any web browser.

The first time you try to login from a mobile browser like Pocket Internet Explorer, you'll be prompted to download and install a mobile client.
You'll have to restart your browser, but once you do, you'll be able to bring up your PC desktop on your PDA.

Of course, your PC desktop is probably too big to fit on your mobile screen, but you can view it one part at a time by placing your stylus on the edges of the screen to scroll around. Or you can shrink the resolution to match your mobile device, which generally makes it much harder to see what you're doing.