X SERVER SOLUTION: opinions please

muse

Registered
Hello,
I am new to this community, although I have been lurking a bit. I hope this question is in the right forum for it.
I have to do with computers and the internet from a designer point of view.

A friend of mine is doing this thing that he asked my opinion about and I thought to put it here:

For a hotel that he's redecorating he wants a website where guests can upload their mp3's, so that they can play them in the hotel bar/disco when they stay there.
Kind of like a mp3-jukebox with the guests' own music.
I really like this idea.
His first thought was to install a fool proof booth of some kind with a touch screen interface and what not.
And rent a lot of server space with some ISP.


My thought for a solution was to put a mac os x server, run the website from that, upload the mp3's to it too, and also hook it up to the sound system and play the music from it.


The direction that apple is taking with their new OS seems very suited to run this type of thing:
-it is built to facilitate multiple users who have different permissions, so it is already quite fool proof and easily adapted to the kind of use I described.
You wouldn't really need a "booth", you could just make a user with limited possibilities (and put a waterproof keyboard ;)).
-it is userfriendly with the graphical interface, which would make it relatively easy to have the staff of the bar run the thing with someone checking in every once in a while from their Mac.
-it seems to me that apple is working to take away the differences between personal and public PC's and built their OS to reflect that, which is in the same line of thinking as my friend's project.
I suspect that there are already some out-of-the-box solutions for this kind of use since their are already some in the regular OS X.
-also this solution leaves open other things they night want to add later (email stations, whatever).

I have MAC OS X, but no experience with X SERVER.

I would like your opinions on whether X SERVER is indeed fit for the thing I described, what problems you foresee, (dis)advantages when compared with a "fool proof booth" solution, other thoughts…

Your input is very much appreciated :)

regards,
M
 
I am not sure if they have it yet but you might be able to find a way to create an interface in real basic where you could use an iMac as a touch screen client. OS X and Server are both Ideal soplutions I think for what your friend wants to do because each person could sign up on a webpage and using PHP and MySQL, you could create a very easy interface for them to upload
 
Thank you very much for your reply.
I'm doing some tests now on my regular OS X to see what it can do, maybe more questions later.
Thanks again :)
 
Elo makes a touchscreen iMac. It's the lowend model but if you load it up with a ton of RAM (1gig) I think it should be OK. You can build a user interface with Flash that interacts with an mp3 player (soundjam is the best for macs). With Soundjam you can preload mp3's into RAM, so it should play nice. I don't know how poeple would upload their mp3's, but like Soapvox said, you can build a web application using php, and mysql that would allow it. Would they upload mp3's from their room or do it right at the server. It all depends on how you want it. But I agree, the idea is cool, having a touch screen iMac at a dance floor pumping out mp3's that you want to here is pretty cool.
 
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