Samba shares have become so common that many applications are able to access the data stored in them. These applications can extend the functionality and usefulness of your Samba shares. For example, the mobile version of the media player VLC can connect to and stream music and video from your Samba share. To access it, select open MRL and use the standard Samba URL: smb://username@your_samba_hostname_or_server_ip/share. You can also use a Samba share as the destination for your backups with the cross-platform backup utility BackupPC.