(I apologize for the delayed post. Took an early flight back to NYC, and only got back online now.)

Last night’s Winners were:

Music:
People’s Choice – DropBoxee by Jon Steinberg
Judges’ Choice – We Are Hunted by Nick Dima

Photos:
People’s Choice – Facebook Photos by Junda Liu
Judges’ Choice – Facebook Photos by Junda Liu

Video:
People’s Choice – BBC Live by Ian Tweedie
Judges’ Choice – OpenCourseWare by Roshan Revankar

The Dev Challenge was a great success. Over 40 apps were submitted as part of the challenge. We were really excited to see some of the innovation and elaborate work that was involved. It is too bad we had only 2 winners in each category..

We are going to put more efforts into our API and working with developers. We are pleased to announce that Shawn Rieger (one of the founders of BoxeeHQ) is joining the Boxee team to fill exactly this purpose.

We had a great time at the event last night. The place was packed and there was a great vibe. Now we need to decide where we’re going to do the Beta Launch. Maybe in LA?

We have a few exciting announcements today (which makes for our longest blog post ever).

#1 – Boxee for Windows
We are finally releasing a public alpha of boxee for Windows. We are looking forward to getting feedback from PC users, so we will be ready for beta later this year.

Boxee is now available for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu users, and our goal is to keep the 3 platforms in sync as we release updates and upgrades.

#2 – Major League Baseball

We are excited to announce a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB.com) to offer MLB.TV Premium to boxee users.

MLB.TV Premium on boxee means you can now watch thousands of baseball games, live and on-demand in HD (where available). on top of that, MLB.TV Premium offers DVR functionality to pause and rewind a live game. MLB.com represents a big step for boxee as we hope this is the first of many different live sports offerings we can bring to you. We hope other sports follow MLB.com’s lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teams….

#3 – New navigation layout

We have changed the navigation in boxee to be more streamlined. There is a clear separation between Internet and Local media, so it is clear where you can find your local media and where you can access apps like Netflix, MLB, Pandora, etc.

In the new version you will see:
Applications, which has all the Internet content.
Local Media, which lists all the media on the computer and the local network

#4 – Digg

Digg constantly drives traffic and conversations around the web.  They are doing the same for video, and it seems like a perfect fit for a boxee experience.

Over the past few weeks we have been working with Digg to create a ‘Digg for TV’ experience, where you can see the most popular videos, as well as what is up and coming.

A future release will also enable users to Digg stuff directly from boxee.

#5 – Tumblr

We love Tumblr at boxee. We thought enabling users to stream music and view slideshows from the people they are following on Tumblr would be a cool experience on boxee, so we worked with them to build it.

We will continue to work with the Tumblr team and you should expect more Tumblr features on boxee soon.

#6 – current_

Current works with a young adult audience to create and distribute great content that is relevant, informative and inspiring. They use a two-way approach to media, and combine Citizen Journalism and viewer participation with professional, rich content to create a unique viewing experience.

We think it’s a great fit for Boxee. The Current app includes the participatory movie review show (The Rotten Tomatoes Show), the weekly media-focused variety show (infoMania), the original documentary series (Vanguard), and the half-hour animated series (SuperNews).

#7 – 1080p for Ubuntu running Nvidia
Great news for users of boxee on Ubuntu. If you have Nvidia that supports VDPAU you will now be able to play HD videos (up to 1080p) utilizing Nvidia’s hardware acceleration for H264, MPEG2 and VC1.

#8 – bug fixes
Like with every new version we are trying to make progress on stability and performance. In this release we have made changes to almost every piece of code we have. Hopefully fixing more bug than creating new ones..

Major Changes with this Version Since Public Release

• Improved playback of Internet streams.
• Introduced VDPAU hardware acceleration on nVIDIA GPUs under Linux (major kudos to Team XBMC for this one).
• Fixed M4A and M4V playback support.
• Fixed low volume during video playback under Mac OSX and AppleTV.
• Performance improvement and lower CPU usage under Mac OSX.
• Enhanced codec support, improving overall playback of all media.
• Improved DVD playback.
• Official Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jacklope support.
• PulseAudio support under Linux (shaky, but works).
• MP3 files indexed based on id3 tags.

P.S.
A note about the use of proper Upper/Lower case in this blog post: As part of our effort to make Boxee more friendly for the mainstream consumer (and frankly to stop the angry emails i keep receiving from the grammar police) we are abandoning the only corporate policy we ever had: lowercase only.

thanks to our friends at justin.tv we have a live stream of tonight’s event in SF.

doors will open at 6pm PT.
the live broadcast will start at 7pm PT.

the dev challenge has produced some great apps in each of the categories. this is very exciting. the voting is now open (the polls will close on June 22nd at 11:59pm PT).

winners will be announced at our event in San Francisco on June 23rd (7pm at the Mezzanine). the host for the evening will be Veronica Belmont! for those of you who can’t join us in person there is going to be a live stream of the event courtesy of Justin.tv

the People’s Choice Award in each category will receive a Drobo + 4TB from Seagate

the Judge’s Choice Award (Veronica Belmont, Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis) in each category will receive a Sony Bravia XBR9 46″

during the event we will also launch (finally) our Windows version, announce new partnerships and share more info about the boxee beta

we are pleased to announce that Amie Street is now available on boxee. Amie Street is a new comer to the Music Store scene, and they have taken a fresh new look at what a Music Store experience means.

they have a very consumer friendly approach. when new tracks/albums show up on Amie Street they are dirt cheap. the price rises as they gain popularity (but never more that $0.98 per track), so if you’re one of those people that are early to discover new music you are awarded by paying really low prices! you can stream the full tracks on the web, or download DRM-free MP3s.

if you REC (write a short review) the music you discover, you are rewarded when they become more popular (you actually get credit to your account).

the first version of the Amie Street boxee enables you to listen to the music in your Amie Street library, listen to your playlists, browse the history of the stuff you’ve been listening to during the day, browse recommendations and more. you can also save albums for later (so you can listen/buy them on the web). future versions will also enable you to buy music directly from boxee.

there is also a special offer for boxee users:

• Go to http://amie.st/boxee-challenge to get 25% when you add credit to your account.
• Sign up and you can download these 17 tracks of glory @ericdamiestreet put together for free
• If you’re in NYC, swing by our office in Long Island City (1 stop from grand central on the 7) and we’ll hook you up with some sweet t-shirts, buttons, and possibly a shot of Malort.

Amie Street in their own words:

What is Amie Street?
Amie Street is a pretty sweet music store.  All songs start free or stupid cheap and rise in price to 98 cents as they become more popular.  That means when new albums come out like the new Spinal Tap (http://amie.st/music/spinal-tap) you can get them at a really good price if you come across them early enough (Music in your Inbox every Tuesday is the best way to do that http://amie.st/newsletter/landing?pytr=boxee-challenge).  Everything you download comes in MP3 and you can listen to anything you buy in full from the site.  You can also REC your favorites (tiny reviews) and if song becomes more popular, you can get credit back in your account for more music.

What does the app do?
The purpose of the app is to connect what you do on Amiestreet.com during the day while you’re at work/school/library whatever with your living room. The app has two basic modes: pull in, push out.  You pull in your purchases and listen to them in your library, make a playlist at work and then listen to it at home while you do chores, show your roommate that awesome live album by The Drones (http://amie.st/music/the-drones) you came across, or use your history to track down that crazy pirate jig you bumped into after lunch (http://amie.st/music/dark-dark-dark) etc. You push out went you’re actively browsing your recommendations, the new releases, or search by saving them for later (and soon buying them) to listen to while you’re at work the next morning.

Why is boxee and the Amie Street app awesome?
One of the things we focus on a lot is making music fun again.  We want to expose people to as much music as possible that makes them stand up and say “damn! what was that?”. Music should excite us, and not just be something that annoys us when it starts autoplaying on a myspace page.  We all have at least one experience when we were listening to the radio in the kitchen or a new record playing on the family turntable that genuinely surprised us and made our mouths drop. Boxee as a platform can connect you to music by its very nature in a way that connects to you personally with a level of intimacy that just isnt possible to achieve through a website blasting out of your crappy laptop speakers.

What was it like developing on boxee?
Coming from a Flex background, building apps in boxee is super simple.  For a long time, it has been nothing but background noise.  After adjusting to the GUI XML specifics, trading in AS3 for python, and figuring out you need to edit sources.xml, it was a breeze.  The app itself does everything over our API (more on that in a few weeks) and because of the way our API is engineered, generating a client class to use inside the boxee app took all of 10 minutes of C++.

What’s next for the app?
Being able to buy albums. Browsing by genres. RECs. Staff picks. Totally open to suggestions. Email me lucas@amiestreet.com

Can I get some free stuff?
Always. Go to http://amie.st/boxee-challenge to get 25% when you add credit to your account.  Sign up and you can download these 17 tracks of glory @ericdamiestreet put together for free http://amie.st/playlist/0eIZdys_fvox?pytr=boxee-challenge If you’re in NYC, swing by our office in Long Island City (1 stop from grand central on the 7) and we’ll hook you up with some sweet t-shirts, buttons, and possibly a shot of Malort (http://www.flickr.com/photos/srobbin/3632773093/).

What is Malort?
Check wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malort

AnyClip is a new service that is currently in private alpha, so only some users will be able play with it (in the meantime you should check out their facebook app, Casting Couch).

AnyClip is obtaining rights for short clips from your favorite movies and TV shows (you can read about that painful process in their CEO’s blog). the result should serve as a great platform for users to share their favorite moments with their friends and the world, and for developers to build great apps that integrate these clips.

i am friends with both Aaron Cohen and Nate Westheimer from AnyClip, so i am looking forward to seeing AnyClip launch their service (and API), so we could get it tightly integrated with boxee.

AnyClip in their own words:

AnyClip will launch later this year as a comprehensive library of legally-licensed scenes from Hollywood movies. While we’re still in active negotiations with the rights holders of the films, this preview-only Boxee application begins to show the potential behind tying such a powerful platform to applications like Boxee. Ultimately, applications like AnyClip for Boxee will enable people to relive any moment, from any film, on any platform.

WeAreHunted.com is a new music service. they listen to what you are listening to on blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, forums, P2P and more to chart the most popular songs online. the result is a great new way to discover music.

the first time i heard about WeAreHunted was when Nick Dima told me he is considering writing a boxee app for it. i immediately fell in love with the service, so i was excited to see that Nick made the effort and was able build the app just in time for the dev challenge.

Nick Dima in his own words:

After a full night of coding (is 6 AM right now in my time zone) I present to the world the first version of my app based on WeAreHunted.com.

I tried to stay close to the site’s original design and experience and it turned out almost great… I’ll have to code some workarounds for the next version to make it more cooler and also implement the twitter charts. The code might be a little messy as my experience with python was close to zero when starting this project. It was fun working on this.

This is it for now… I’ll go catch some sleep.

we were very excited to receive a boxee application from the National Film Board of Canada. the app provides access to movies produced by NFB.

you can play full length movies, search and play trailers. they have some really great content. i am a bit biased,  i am a documentary film buff, and they have plenty! we are proud to have them on board.

it is also great to see the dev challenge driving more Canadian content into boxee. there is a growing number of boxee users in Canada, and they are lobbying hard for us to invest more in bringing content from Canada.

the NFB in their own words:

I am the lead web developer for the National Film Board of Canada, and boxee was introduced to me by one of my colleagues pushing the idea of how cool it would allow him to view our content on his TV, and it is also in line with our outreach strategy. Working with Mark Trudel I’ve finished what is the first release of our  boxee plugin. Which enables the viewing of over 700 films from the National Film Board of Canada.

The application uses  mix of python, mrss and GUI XML in just the right proportions as to not go crazy and maintain flexibility for the future releases.

WatchUWant is like Pandora for video. you type in what you want to watch (e.g. funny stuff, karaoke, etc.) and WatchUWant will start playing an endless stream of clips (currently all from YouTube) that match what you were asking for.

it is highly entertaining! a new way to create a “TV-like” channel experience on the Internet. i love it. they say below that WatchUWant is ideal for for devices that demand less interaction. i totally agree. when in a lean-back mode users don’t want to invest too much time (if at all) between the videos they watch. they want as continuous an experience as possible.

UPDATE: due to a bug with the boxee video playlist feature we had to take down the WatchUWant app from the App Box. we are working on fixing the bug and then put it back up.

WatchUWant in their own words:

About Us: WatchUWant is three people with a shared vision: fix television! Adam Bossy develops Web-based content management products as a software engineer at IBM. Arvind Narayanan studies anonymity and privacy on the Web as a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University. David Molnar will soon be a member of Microsoft Research, where he will continue innovative work on discovering bugs in software.

The app: We’re Pandora for video. We create automatic programming for any distribution method. We get better and better the more people use us, even across different devices.
“Channels” are automatically generated based on user queries. These channels play an endless stream of clips, and we determine how well we choose videos based on how quickly the user skips (or doesn’t skip) to the next one.

We are particularly useful for devices that demand less interaction — mobile and television — because we remove the burden of navigation. On the Web, we’ve found that this way of presenting removes the cognitive load of choosing videos and keeps users highly engaged. All our videos are pulled from YouTube.

Our experience: Our experience developing our boxee app had various challenges. While it is easy to produce streamlined and aesthetically pleasing user experience in boxee, the applications must fit a certain mold, from which our video app deviated. We are excited about the excitement around boxee and the community that it has quickly formed and hope to contribute to it as its popularity grows.

Adam
http://watchuwant.tv/

PokerStars.TV is the world’s largest poker site with live webcasts, video blogs and TV shows from PokerStars events across the world.

Mike McMullin is a poker player, PokerStars.TV fan and a programmer.. so it’s no surprise he built PokerStars as his first app. it provides a great experience for watching poker on your TV.

Mike McMullin in his own words:

I work in the technology field fixing computer most of the time, but am a hobbyist programmer.  I enjoy c#, flash, and web languages. The boxee plugin was a bit different of a challenge and an interesting battle (me and python don’t often see eye to eye).

Besides programming I enjoy playing poker so the PokerStars.tv was a good way to watch poker on Boxee.  The application uses yahoo pipes to format the html from the pages into an rss feed that the app can use.