bass fishing is big. big enough to have networks like ESPN and FOX broadcast some of the bass fishing tournaments. so it was great to see Walter Moore bringing Bass Edge to boxee. he wrote two apps that are currently available on the App Box: Bass Edge Pro Tips and THE EDGE Podcast.

the Bass Edge Pro Tips has some of the top professionals in the bass fishing world sharing tips and how-tos, and the weekly podcast includes tips, product reviews and interviews.

after watching several of the videos i went fishing with my son last weekend. we caught nothing, but built an appetite for lunch..

Walter Moore in his own words:

I’m your typical 20-something freelance web dev / Linux geek in Iowa.  Last year my wife & I realized we didn’t need the baggage of Dish Network so we dumped Dish in favor of Netflix, OTAHD (with MythTV for a DVR), and Internet content.  Shortly after that Boxee was on the news and I gave it a try.  Since then it has become one of our main viewing platforms, typically used in our home theater, with xwii running a wiimote for control.

I’ve been doing development work for Fusion Media Works (http://www.fusionmediaworks.com – FMW Produces the Bass Edge TV Show) for several years, part of that work includes a Rails based CMS to run the Bass Edge website (http://www.bassedge.com).  Being a webapp guy, who likes Boxee, and working on a site that has media, I put 2+2 together and had the MRSS feed hashed out in a few minutes.  I spent some time looking over the Boxee API and documentation, and then wrote the initial video app by using the ThruYou app as a starting point.  Overall I’d say 3/4 of my time was spent on research and coming up with the basic layout, coding it was pretty simple with the Boxee GUI XML and Python API.  Even with all the layouts ideas I tried I don’t think I spent more than 10 hours total on the apps.  I thought it was interesting to work on a Boxee app from both ends – generating the feed with a Rails app and then consuming it with the Boxee app.

I have plans to add more features to the Bass Edge apps, including categorized navigation for the videos, a search feature,  and error handling for the feeds, but ETA is unknown.