This video, from the Boxee blog, shows how you can use a USB memory stick to install the open source social media center. 

Boxee plays media from your computer and other devices in your home network, and can connect you to various Internet sources that allow you to stream or download movies, tv shows, music and photos. Versions are available for Mac, Windows, Linux and Apple TV.

how to install boxee on your Apple TV:

1. download the ATVUSB-Creator from http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
2. insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Mac (Windows and Linux versions coming soon)
3. run the ATVUSB-Creator and select which plug-ins you’d like to install
4. remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
5. power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
6. after the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
7. it now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
8. click on Boxee, then select update (this will download boxee from the Internet)
9. once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
10. disable your Apple TV screensaver (set it to ‘never’)
11. click “Boxee”, then select “Boxee” in the sub-menu to start boxee.

It looks like Cindy McCain is the latest social media hijacking victim. 

A Twitter account has been set up with her name, and it’s spewing irreverent info:

At this point, “she” only has 20 followers, so the influence of this fake account will be minimal.

via FaceReviews

A year ago, we predicted that the iPhone would soon have 1% of the browser market share, if Apple met its sales goals. 

It not only appears to be doing that, but the iPhone is an unqualified hit:

• The iPhone’s browser share was up 58% last month.
• 30 percent of U.S. consumers who purchased Apple’s new iPhone 3G from June through August 2008 switched from other mobile carriers to join AT&T. Nearly half (47 percent) of new AT&T iPhone customers that switched carriers switched from Verizon Wireless, another 24 percent switched from T-Mobile, and 19 percent switched from Sprint.
• The iPhone is now the most popular phone in the “smartphone” category.
• iPhone sales are drastically higher than expected sales.

According to NPD’s “iPhone 3G Report,” before the launch of the iPhone 3G, iPhone sales represented 11 percent of the consumer market for smartphones (January through May 2008); however, after the launch of iPhone 3G, Apple commanded 17 percent of the smartphone market (January through August 2008).

The average price of a smartphone sold between June and August 2008 was $174, down 26 percent from $236 during the same period last year. During June through August 2008, the top four best-selling smartphones based on unit-sales to consumers were as follows:

1. Apple iPhone 3G
2. RIM Blackberry Curve
3. RIM Blackberry Pearl
4. Palm Centro

More important than selling a lot of phones, though, is the fact that Apple has succeeded in defining a new hypermobile computer category. 

As a result, Apple’s iPhone is the most important device in new media:

• It’s raised the bar for cell phones, turning them into platforms for mobile media consumption. It doubled the number of users for Pandora’s Internet radio service. 
• It’s been the catalyst for Apple’s wildly successful App Store, leading to a huge variety of pioneering social media/new media applications.
• It’s become an important device for mobile content publishing.  

Based on the lukewarm reception of Google’s Android platform, it looks like it will be a long time before a strong competitor for the iPhone emerges.

Audio Recorder is a free program that lets you record with your Mac from any input device directly to AIFF, WAV, MP3, MP4 or AppleLossLess formats.

Download link

 

The Vodpod WordPress plugin lets you collect videos from thousands of sites on the Net, and add them to your WordPress blog with an interactive gallery.

If you’re interested in sharing a curated collection of videos, this could be a good option. 

Readers can scroll through videos you’ve collected without having to leave your blog. Playback of the video occurs in the widget, on your blog.

You can set up your gallery so that it displays the most recent videos you’ve collected, or a more specific selection of videos, arranged in a specific order.

Fring (App Store link) is a new app for the iPhone and iPod touch that supports free voice over IP (VoIP) telephony. 

Fring lets you use voice and text communications with a variety of services, including fring, Skype, MSN, Twitter, Google Talk and AIM. On the iPhone and touch, service is available using your WiFi connection. 

fring lets you see who’s online before dialing with contact availability indicators, engage in multiple conversations simultaneously via fring’s chat, send & receive files with file transfer capabilities and use  fringAdd-ons like facebook, Gmail Notifier, Vtap Video Streaming, Orkut Social Network, Yandex Push Email and other apps tapping into the fringAPI.

Fring site

The Cassiopeia Project – an effort to make HD science videos available to everyone – has a great series of videos available that look at the enormous breadth of information that make the concepts of common descent and macroevolution inescapable, obvious conclusions. 

Think dinosaurs and cavemen walked the earth together? Then you probably haven’t watched any of these videos!

iTunes link

Weddings aren’t all faith, love and happiness.

There’s usually a bit of abject terror mixed in and something – be it the bridesmaid’s dresses, the flowers or the dj – from hell itself. 

Case in point: A rivalry between two wedding podcasters has devolved into a battle to the death – at least for one of the podcasts. 

In 2006, New Jersey wedding videographer Robert Ehrlich and his wife started a podcast, creating a website where couples could download shows about planning a wedding, choosing a dress, selecting a florist and planning a honeymoon.

They called their site the Wedding Podcast Network.

A few months later, Ralph Mucci, another New Jersey wedding videographer, also started a website where couples could download shows about planning a wedding, choosing a dress, selecting a florist and planning a honeymoon.

He called his site the Wedding Podcast Channel.

Did they all live happily ever after?

Actually, they ended up in court.

Apple today announced some minor updates to Apple TV:

While there are some interesting incremental updates in this release, there’s nothing that here that moves Apple TV beyond Steve Jobs’ ‘hobby’ status.

Last year, we called the Kindle “this year’s Zunetanic, an over-hyped iPod-wannabee.”

A little harsh, maybe, but the prediction is panning out to be true. 

Since then, Amazon has dropped the price for the Kindle, announced a lot more books for the device and sold in modest numbers, leading Amazon to admit that the device was not the iPod of ebooks. 

Even mainstream publications are starting to figure out that the Kindle is an overhyped niche product. Forbes today pointed out that Stanza (App Store link), a free book reading application for the iPhone, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day.

By comparison, Citigroup estimates Amazon will sell around 380,000 Kindles in 2008. In other words, Apple’s selling more e-readers than any other company in the nascent digital book market, without even trying. 

Here’s what we said a week before the Zune was introduced:

Without podcast support, the Kindle will be a relatively boring, closed system, like the first-generation Zunes. It will be a Sony Reader on steroids. An interesting gadget.

If Amazon embraces podcasting, though, the company could quickly establish the Kindle as a new platform for consumption of Internet content. Users would have access to 100,000+ audio podcasts, on all sorts of topics. And because podcasting can be used to deliver all sorts of payloads, such as PDFs, it could be used with the Kindle to let you subscribe to daily news updates, online magazines and other free Web content.

We’ll be watching the Kindle introduction with interest. But, unless it supports subscribing to free Web-based content in an open way, we expect it to follow the path to nowhere blazed by the Sony Reader.

There’s obviously a market for the Kindle and the Sony Reader. But, when Apple, or some other company introduces an iPod touch with a larger screen, the days of proprietary ebook readers will probably be over.