I ended up purchasing the Flip Clock (Pic above) and the Night Stand (pic below) app. But the first thing I noticed was that the dimmer function wasn’t actually a dimmer function. What it does instead is just to make the graphics opaque letting more black background through. The screen is still just as bright. Black isn’t black. So it’s still too bright, very annoying. Also, the dimmer function on Night Stand is super buggy. The double tap to dim is very nice — but it doesn’t work. Well, it works once out of a hundred or so tabs.

On the Flip Clock app, the navigation’s all messed up. Muy bugg-o. And the dimmer is not a dimmer, just an opaque-er. And I decided after some usage that having a built in alarm was overkill. I just use the iPhone “repeat daily” alarm. Flip Clock doesn’t have an alarm, Night Stand does. Also, I like the design of Flip Clock better, and it supports the iPhone alarm including snooze, sooo… Flip Clock it is.

All this ranting to come to a completely unrelated point. While reading reviews I come across a comment by some moron saying (in Swedish) “Hey, stop writing comments in English, it only shows up in the Swedish iTunes store!”.

So Mr. Smith moves from Somewhere, CA USA to Sweden because he very much likes to work at the Royal Institute of Technology, he purchases an iPhone, he finds himself an application he likes and feels he wants to contribute with feedback to the nice developers, but oh… oh no!… my god, he doesn’t speak Swedish yet. He was so busy spending 10 years becoming a professor in whatever-ology that he forgot to learn Swedish to please ignorant Swedes!

Or Ms. Mgundu from some obscure country I have yet to learn of seeks refuge from persecution, makes an effort to speak her mind in the only language she masters enough to feel comfortable using making a public comment, and the highly enlightened Swede strikes again.

Ok, all very much not likely, but you get my point. Peoples rush to judgement pisses me off sometimes. Actually, people pisses me off sometimes in general. Stupid people always pisses me off. Obviously, he/she masters the English language enough to understand comments in English. Either that, or he had someone else write up this angry comment for him to post. But that would just be plain stupid. Oh wait, that was my point, he is stupid. He did however follow up with a warm and fuzzy comment and a 4/5 rating. How nice.

English is the second language here, it is beyond “likely” that anyone who owns an iPhone and is browsing the App Store, can understand comments written in English. Maybe he/she wanted to make sure his/her commented was understood by the developers so they can make use of it.

I actually got caught in the whole country catch 22 in the Apple store when I moved back to Sweden from the US. I had a song that the payment didn’t go through for, and when I noticed, I didn’t have the American credit card anymore. Couldn’t pay for it with a Swedish credit card because my account was american, and I couldn’t switch to a Swedish account because I had an unpaid song. Paypal to save the day. See my reasoning? American moves to Sweden + Swedish credit card = Swedish Apple Store riddled with moronic comments.

Ok, that was harsh of me. But uTorrent is by far my favorite torrent client for Windows. Very lightweight, rich on features, stable etc. It does its job, and more. Except to exist for Mac OS X.

Other clients like Transmission and Tomato has done a good job of filling the void in my heart, and Transmission did get quite close, but not all the way.

I’ve been trying out the beta release of uTorrent for Mac today and I’m liking it. Stable so far, light and fancy looking. RSS is missing and they say the release may have some “serious bugs”, but they think it’s “stable enough to share”. Well, so far I’m real happy with it. Fancy seeing you.

Go get uTorrent for Mac beta I tell ya!

On the Boxee blog I read some good news for all of you who’s waiting on the Windows version of Boxee to be released.

Some 200 people have signed up for the pre-alpha testing of boxee for Window, but I can imagine that number will grow rather quickly when word gets out more. Not sure how many testers they’re planning letting in though.

To the general we can add local media scanning, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and CNN and Hulu. For me, local media scanning hasn’t been an issue at all, I’m just hoping that they address the network media scanning and improve that.

Right now, I’m tossed between the super fast network scanning by my Xbox 360 but inability to play all my file types, and the super slow network scanning by Boxee but ability to play all and everything I throw at it. And the fact that I don’t have an Xbox in my bedroom.

Oh hey, Boxee team! You should definitely have a look at the MtvMusic service. How cool would that be to have in Boxee? Buuuut like everything else, if you’re not in the States, you’re not allowed to watch jack. Damn it. They did however allow me to watch music videos for a while when they released the website. Then they slammed the door in my face.

Oh and people, if you like Boxee, you should nominate them for The Crunchies!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Boxee, my new favorite media center application just announced that they landed a $4 million investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures at 50% each, and this brings me joy and sparkles in my eyes.

Since I last reviewed Boxee, and re-reviewed it, I have really fallen even more in love with this application. I can only assume this investment will bring more awesomeness to the application and the Boxee team. Maybe they can do the network browsing a bit faster, have settings stick (When I change “View” under say Movies, then go up or down a level and back, the View setting is reset). And I don’t know if caching is busted somehow, but thumbnail view is slow as snails. Actually, every time I enter Movies, the system has to think for way too long for me not to get testy. Another thing I’ve been wondering about is if the system respects folder names/structures, or if it uses the media file only for data.

Anyway, on with the good cash flow.

They say their goals for 2009 are:

• grow out of our comfortable closed-alpha cocoon and launch a kick-ass beta
• build even more functionality and content into boxee while making it easier to navigate
• listen to user requests, ideas and frustrations (and improve the product accordingly)
• work with team-xbmc, developers and partners to extend boxee beyond the confines of our limited resources
• finish the year with ~ 1,000,000 users

Not so many concrete goals I have to say. But yeah, we’d like to see improvements… They hit 100′000 sign-ups last week, that’s a good start. Congratulations Boxee!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

So Oblong Industries is developing the g-speak spatial operating environment. Right. I was watching the two videos (below) and it’s just sick. I have no idea really how this is achieved, but it all seems a bit jiggly, but seriously… How cool is that!?

“The g-speak platform is built around free-hand, three-space gestural input. Applications are controlled by hand poses, movement and pointing. Finger and hand motion are tracked to 0.1mm at 100 hz; pointing is pixel-accurate. Two-handed and multi-user input are fully supported.“

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

G-Speak is supposed to offer “solutions to real-world problems” including:

• analysis of large data sets
• operation of three-dimensional interfaces
• construction of efficient multi-user collaborative applications
• integration of large screens and multiple computers into room- and building-scale work environments
• development of large-scale applications that run interactively across enterprise networks

luminous room demos from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The platform, that runs on Linux and Mac, is apparently already in active use at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and universities. Here’s a list of application areas:

• Financial services
• Telepresence
• Network operations centers
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Military and intelligence
• Automotive
• Natural resource exploration
• Data mining and analytics
• Medical imaging
• High-touch retail
• Trade shows and theatrical presentations
• Consumer electronics interfaces

I can’t say I understand what all this mean in practice, but it sounds legit. What I would love to see is a hands-on video from either of the above mentioned institutes where someone actually puts this to use with an intent. Maybe we could see a true purpose of this, one we can understand. But for now, I guess it’s all wow-and-awe.

More at oblong.com, CrunchGear and Engadget

I was watching this demo video by Gotta Be Mobile’s author Rob Bushway the other day, where he was testing the Multi-Touch software for Windows 7, and it’s looking… well, far from usable.

But like I said, it’s all pre-beta on pre-beta, and it’s likely to improve drastically before either is released as a final product. It’s cool to see the Windows environment with the Multi-Touch screen, and I agree with Matt Burns that it does look good. But I’m not impressed. It looks incredibly “jerky” as Rob Bushway says in his article. But let’s be patient shall we?

To be honest, I did expect a better performance from a public beta release. I suppose one could argue that it’s the best way to get lots of feedback, but how do you think the feedback would sound on a beta release like this? I’m still hopeful though, and I’m sure like I said, improvements will be made.

But how funny is this guy? He shows us just how “jerky” it is, and sums it up pretty well… Although, I’d have to say that “the fruit” looks far juicier than the software in question.

If you’re running Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude XT, you can download the drivers at N-Trig.com and give it a spin. Please note the spec requirements “DuoSense technology enabled and the Windows 7 pre-beta version installed on your Dell Latitude XT“

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This video shows a short guided tour of the new, improved Taskbar for Windows 7, and I must say, it really looks good. Some of the features could really help improve productivity, if you’re the mouse-browsing type. Personally, when using Windows (XP), I tend to navigate through the system using the keyboard only, so the “Aero Peek” (a.k.a. “Peek” for short) would render rather useless for me. However, I tend to change my way of working with things every now and then. No matter what, it looks and works nicely indeed and I’m certain many will appreciate it. Check it out:

Update: I found this article on Gizmodo where they show us a “hidden feature” called “Aero Shake”. Not sure why it’s referred to as “hidden”, it could as far as I know always have been there and nobody noticed it. Or if you have to activate the feature as it might have been turned off for beta testers (hence “hidden”), who knows. I just think it’s truly awesome, a really really good idea. It’s one of those things that stands out, and might even think “Ha, not even Mac OS X does that”. Judge for yourselves:

Some things just makes you happy, when life gives you treats, just like on Christmas. When Google launches applications like this… It makes me happy. I can’t do more than agree with Mr. Wauters, it is stunning.

You can even tilt your phone to change your viewing angle to see mountains in 3D! The application also includes geo-located Wikipedia articles, which you can choose to display or hide (it can get cluttery) as well as geo-located photos from Panoramio, all geographically related to what you’re viewing.

Say you search for a company, and you view information about that new Pizza place you’ve heard people talk about, but you have no idea where it’s located. Just click the address and Safari takes over and you can get directions. Just like that.

If you’re just feeling a bit confused about where you are, or if you want to check out your surroundings, you can just make use of the My Location feature, to show your current whereabouts in the real world.

Read more at the Google Earth’s Lat Long Blog and be sure to check out the video below. It shows how amazing this application really is.

Intrigued? Of course you are, you are after all a mere human being, are you not? Go straight to iTunes App Store and try it out for yourself! Language availability lists 16 different languages, so there’s a good chance you’ll be happy.

Direct link to Google Earth in iTunes App Store

My spontaneous reaction when launching the new Boxee version is “Wow, the new version of Boxee surely is a massive update”. And the reaction is a very positive one!

The interface has got a major facelift since the previous version release. The design and layout looks much better and is more useful, and maybe even slightly more intuitive. It makes more sense in a way. It also runs better in general. The release comments stated that this new version has some performance improvements, and I do notice them. It feels less laggy, more light in a way. Internet streaming and caching information seems to work better, and I have not yet experienced an application crash like I did a few times with previous release.

But perhaps the biggest news in the new release is the successful integration with the content from the massively popular Hulu.com, a real cool website offering free streaming media of all kinds. Unfortunately, me being in Sweden, this feature is useless to me any anyone else residing outside the US. That being due to the fact that no videos can stream outside the US due to rights management. Hulu have simply not as of yet obtained the rights to stream content outside the United States, at least if you believe their website, which truly shines with its lack of updates. I have sent an email to them today asking about this, begging for at the very least, an update on the matter, but am yet to hear back from them.

There are some bugs, such as when you are running windowed mode, like I do on my computer right now, having it running in the background, it switches over to fullscreen mode every now and then. When a video ends or when you navigate, it simply switches to fullscreen for some reason. The second bug, a more annoying one, is if the internet streamed video is stalling, if the playback catches up to the stream buffer, the video simply stops and sends you back to the screen where you chose the video, instead of pausing and continue playback when the buffer is big enough. The pause method being what one might be used to from say… every streaming video player on the internet?

A third bug, if you can call it that, is that the interface is not built to run on a 4:3 ratio TV/Monitor. I installed the Boxee application on a computer using a standard 21 inch 4:3 monitor, and it looked… well, not good. Videos does not get stretched or in anyway corrupted, just the Boxee interface when you browse the application.

My first impression of Boxee has certainly passed and progressed more into a more aware, thought through evaluation of an application with some true potential. I still feel, for my personal use, the whole community style interaction is overkill. However, the way the application per se is developing, I can absolutely see this as an alternative to Front Row. The only downside to using Boxee would be that I can’t sync my iPod/iPhone to the media, as I can with the Podcasts I download with iTunes and the media I run through it. So for that purpose, it’s not a true winner. But still pretty freaking awesome!

Some other snags you occasionally run into are the feeds not loading properly. Like right now, none of the feeds on the starting screen are loading. Not even “Recently Used” or “Recently Added”, but mostly it’s the other two, “Recommendations” and “Friends Activity” that doesn’t load. As well as some internet streaming feeds, they just throw you an error message saying “Failed to load stream” or something like that.

Just look at those “Public Torrents”! Dick Tracy, Sherlock Holmes etc… They really did go the extra mile, that’s for sure. Built in Torrent client… dang. Just FYI, if you’re planning on using Boxee and its built in Torrent client, you should read up on Port Forwarding for your router, for best performance. I’ve tried some downloads, they’re still downloading, not the speediest of trackers, but yeah… Still Alpha.

The Boxee application is a software application that runs on Mac and Linux, and will also run on Windows machines in a near future. Boxee is a Media Center type app that allows you to browse your local media, as well as network distributed folders and internet streaming media. You can manually add network sources and they will become available under say “Videos” tab if you have video files. But you can also browse per resource, more Finder or Explorer style if you will, to find media in a certain folder or drive.

The internet streaming feature is a cool feature that makes use of PodCast type XML files, the same way iTunes does with PodCasts, and you can watch any stream without having to subscribe to any of them. They’re just there. Although this is a way to simplify things, I can definitely see some issues in the horizon if people start adding their sources to this, as it’s all Open Source. The library can probably grow significantly pretty fast, making it hard to browse. Just like I feel it’s hard to browse my media library using the “Videos” or “Music” tabs. I have to much media available, so it’s better to go via Resources and go straight to whatever resource I’m looking for.

Boxee is in private Alpha testing mode right now, but it’s running surprisingly well for an Alpha app. Although that’s what the software development scene has turned into. A Beta release is more of a 95% functioning application nowadays than a buggy pre-release of the app. Some of the navigation confuses me and is a bit unintuitive, but I suppose one will learn in time by doing, or it might even change. There is an updated version out in a matter of hours of typing this, and I’m no doubt gonna check out that updated version and post any fixes and updates worth mentioning.

The start screen gives you information about what media has been recently used in your account. You can log in with different users, so it’s all personal. It also shows you a stream of recommended media, what your friends are watching and what has been recently added for your within your system or network resources at your disposal. You have your own account where you can add friends as a social network, where you can recommend media and see what others recommends and are watching, if they (and you) choose to share that information. You can also use your last.fm account to listen to music, and share what you are listening to, but my experience with the last.fm plugin is very buggy with failing to retrieve streams and such, but that might obviously improve.

Using the Internet Videos feature is pretty neat and works pretty well. Although the interface is pretty slow and laggy due to the real-time downloading of information, which also occurs when browsing the network resources to some extent. Browsing YouTube or the CNN channel works pretty well and is a really nice feature, and I’m happy they managed to implemented so well. Let’s just hope they crack a way to implement say Hulu streams into this thing. Now I just have to figure out how to get my local 24/7 news web-TV stream in this thing.

The Pictures tab can be a bit confusing. Apple’s Mac OS X is built to make everything easy for the end user. But the back end is not as simple, and when accessing your iPhoto library with Boxee, this becomes an issue. If you look at the above picture you can see the folders iPhoto creates “behind the scenes” if you will, folder that the end user doesn’t see or use normally. But now when browsing for photos, you have to choose between Auto Import, Data, Originals, Contents, Modified and iPod Photo Cache. Well, at least I do. However, you can choose to browse any folder if you have them stored in an orderly fashion under say Pictures folder on yous Mac, so this doesn’t have to be a confusing factor. But hopefully, this will be caught by the Boxee developers and maybe they can hide irrelevant folders by default.

Above you see the Settings screen, which is a pretty rich interface with a lot of options to play around with. I am running the app in window mode right now which is achieved by hitting the Tab key on your keyboard, but it runs natively in fullscreen mode, and it looks really good! Will I be using this instead of Front Row? Ehh. I will no doubt give this more of my time and keep playing around with it. But honestly, I’m not positive I need the whole socializing thing. Actually, for me, that’s overkill and I’d rather be without it. But overall, it does have more features I DO like than Front Row or my Xbox 360. But realistically, if I sit down in front of the TV, I’m looking to watch my media or listen to my music, so personally, I wouldn’t mind sticking with Front Row for that purpose. But that’s in my living room, in the future, when I’m done playing with this app. Well, I still love the internet streaming… Who knows!?

What I would LOVE to see, is a Spotify plugin for Boxee! How awesome wouldn’t that be? You would need to use a keyboard though, since it’s search based… But I’m sure they can make something really useful out of that! The radio feature perhaps?

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Read more at Boxee.tv, Boxee Blog, Appletell and CrunchGear