A few months ago HomePipe launched a service which lets you access file stored on your PC or Mc using an iPhone or Android device. I took a look at the service as part of my roundup of cloud-based storage apps for Android.

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This week the company rolled out a new feature which lets you stream music from your computer to your phone.

Probably the niftiest feature of HomePipe is that there’s almost no setup required. You just install the desktop app and install the mobile app and login to both with your username and password. You don’t have to configure which folders your music collection is stored in, because HomePipe lets you browse all the folders on your PC.

On the other hand, it would be kind of nice if you could designated a few favorite folders to make navigation easier.

The biggest problem I encountered with the new music streaming is that it was hit or miss. The first time I tried to stream a song from my Windows XP laptop to my Android phone, it worked beautifully. And that was the last time that was true. Most of my successive attempts were met with a buffering notice. Every now and then a song would start to play. But before I could even snap a screenshot, playback would stop and the buffering would start again. Your results may vary.

HomePipe is available as a free download from the Android Market. You can also download HomePipe Free or HomePipe Premium for the iPhone from the App Store.

SugarSync, ZumoDrive, Dropbox, and HomePipe are three apps that let you access files from your computer on your mobile phone. I mean, that’s not all they do. They actually let you synchronize files between computers, and store some of your files on the web — making it easy to access documents, music, photos, videos, or other files from virtually any computer with a web browser. But in the last day or so, we’ve seen updates from all three companies making it easier to do those things with an Android phone.

HomePipe

HomePipe launched its Android app this morning. It lets users access files on their home network on their phones using a 3G or WiFi connection.

You can run HomePipe on any Windows or Mac computer to stream your files over the internet to your phone. HomePipe offers unlimited storage — because files are actually streaming from your home network, not a cloud-based server. Unfortunately, this means that if you turn off your computer, you won’t be able to access your files remotely.

HomePipe for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also a free app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. You can download the PC server software from HomePipe.net.

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