we designed boxee to be an entertainment focused experience. we assumed many people will use boxee on Mac Minis or laptops that are connected to big displays, so we put lots of emphasis on things looking good when you’re 10 foot away. we also figured the most relevant input device will be a remote control (giving extra attention to the Apple Remote).

we realized some people will use boxee on their laptops and will want the keyboard to work, or they’d use a wireless keyboard, so we mapped several keys on the keyboard to allow easy navigation.

but we’re getting lots of requests/complaints about the lack of mouse support, and some people are really passionate about it…

the people have spoken, and we must listen. the next alpha release will be mouse friendly.

very impressive!!

i don’t think i’ll ever reach this level.. my frothing skills are getting better, but i am a lost cause in terms of my drawing abilities..

we were selected as a finalist at CEA’s i-stage competition.
being selected as one of the finalist is really exciting, but winning it will be really sweet!
we could use that turnkey booth for CES as well as the $50,000…

in case we win the competition we will split the $50K prize with team-xbmc, which could help with setting up next year’s DEV CON as well as maybe an XBMC USER CON?

while many people have upgraded their Mac OS to Leopard (10.5) there are still a good number of Tigers (10.4) out there, so we’re happy to announce that the latest version of boxee for mac (released today) supports Tiger.

we released a small update to the latest alpha version for Mac.
focused on resolving a few annoying bugs.

looking forward to hearing from you on our forums or by email to support [at] boxee d0t tv.

bug fixes:

• performance boost for video/music library – browsing your library of movies, tv shows and music should be a bit faster now
• SMB optimizations and bug fixes – this is an on going battle, trying to get SMB working properly over your local network. this version should scan your folders faster and streaming of HD videos should also work better
• keymap changes - removed the long jump from remote’s right/left
• fixed: erasing the library - in case your library gets corrupted for whatever reason you can erase it via the Settings screen. now it will actually erase it..
• fixed: resolution reverting from full screen to windowed – some of you experienced situations where playing a video reverted to Window mode
• fixed: sometimes boxee would not start scanning an SMB share – in some cased boxee did not start scanning a new SMB share until you restart it

last time he rocked Webster Hall and won the crowd of the NY Video Meetup.

this time it was NY Tech Meetup that got the gidon-show. see coverage here.

my third bug report to team-xbmc four years back was assigned to this guy yuvalt. israel being so small (yet a powerhouse in coffee making), it turns out we have met sometime in 2000 on some trip to the dead sea… and i can go on blabbering how he knows vulkanr and avner, or how he introduced us to Gamester17 and pike and so forth…

when we did xbmc devcon08 back in june, yuvalt was extremely passionate about, well, everything xbmc really. so now, almost 3 months later, i am extremely happy to welcome yuvalt to boxee, where he can spend even more time and effort on xbmc.

p.s. more invites coming out now. its a monday after all