Ok, here's a predicament i found myself in:
I am in office and want to listen to my favourite shoutcast stream (aka online radio) - because its allowed (yay!). I cant install winamp or anything else, so i am stuck with my not-exactly-favourite Windows Media Player (wmp). The trouble is, WMP cant seem to be able understand that .PLS file (.PLS = Playlist file) which all shoutcast streams keep info as. So i save this .pls file to the disk and try opening it in WMP. Still, no go (arghh, now you see why its not exactly my favourite).
A bit of googling and here's what i found:
A simple open-source app by Jon Galloway that converts the .PLS file into information that WMP can understand. And that too on the fly. Its called OpenPlsinWMP (see?). Don't try the link in that post, cause it doesn't work (at least not for me). The alternate place to download it is here.
Kudos for the good work Jon, thanks!
Update:
My favourite Shoutcast stream - Bollywood Music Radio. And for those unlucky ones who are stuck behind a firewall and unable to use the above, try their web-based radio player that requires only WMP to be installed (which it usually is)