Network Directories (for Music, etc)

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Has anyone head of a way to trick the OS into thinking a directory is local when it's on the network?

The idea is to share a directory full of music for example, and be able to play any of the 3500 tracks from the popular music players over a 3G connection. Without having to deal with Orb or webpages or any of that nonsense. The interface is key...would be great to do this at the OS level.

There is no "trick" here.
When a directory is not on your actual hard drive the contents needs to be delivered by some protocol over the network.
This means that:
a) There has to be a server on the machine where the directory actually resides.
b) There has to be a matching client on the receiving device.

Presuming that your cell network does not limit ports and your PC has a static IP you can even use windows file sharing to access the content. Of course this would not be very secure over internet.
You could also use and FTP server.

As for "OS level" Win Mobile has the client for windows shares built in so that is about as native as you can go but like I said it is not something you want to use over the internet (unless you have not concerns what so ever about who is poking around your PC).

Thanks levenum. Any clue how one would map the windows share?

The question was aimed at seeing if anyone might know of a client-server application that existed which did the same or better job than WM natively, using windows shares. FTP rarely supports block-level reads, and I'm fairly certain the clients out there don't either (much less map).

Ports etc. would of course be forwarded, and the system would need to be secured. Or even read-only, it doesn't matter...it could just be a r/o samba share on a hardened box. Security can be a non-issue if done right.

At the moment I only see how I can "open path" from File Explorer. I don't see a way to map it though =/


(WM6)

Good point.

I am not sure about mapping, never tried it but here is what I did manage:
First, in Total Commander (PPC version) you can save links to shares.
Now when I open a share with TC I get two things:
1) The transfer is much faster than with the built in explorer (even though there is no change in the connection, the explorer just seems to pause to "think"

2) When I double click on a file which is associated with a program, say an MP3 TC knows to launch the program and give it access to the file without copying it to device first.

I have never tried opening a network file from "open dialog" of a player directly though.

Ahh, okay. Yeah, problem is when trying to open say, a playlist of files. I could see the possibilities of possibly streaming video this way ad-hoc, but without mapping, playing lots of music is pointless. Thanks though.

I found that Resco Explorer can map a file share. I will try it out when I get home and am able to temporarily open a hole in my firewall.