Newman Zone

I bought an HDTV and a Mac Mini last year for two reasons: to watch high-definition cable TV, and to view services like Netflix, Vongo, and Joost on a big screen. Since then, Vongo disappeared (Starz made a deal with Netflix instead), Joost discontinued its stand-alone application, and Hulu emerged as one of the most popular video sites. Suddenly, full-length movies and TV episodes were everywhere. Even the big three networks got involved: you could watch every episode of “Lost” on abc.com in streaming HD video, and it looked amazingly good on a high-definition television.

Then there was a flurry of set-top boxes: Apple TV, Roku Netflix, Blockbuster OnDemand, SlingCatcher - you name it.

But the promise of TV/Internet convergence seemed no closer to reality. After all, who wants to buy a different set-top box for every service? And who wants to visit a dozen different web sites to find the movie or television show you want to watch?

Enter Boxee. Finally, a company that gets it.

What’s the big deal about Boxee?

• Ease of use - You can navigate using a keyboard, a mouse, an Apple Remote, and (soon) even an iPhone app.
• Content aggregation - You can watch video from ABC, CBS, Netflix, YouTube, CNN, Comedy Central, Joost, and many other web sites without using a browser.
• Downloadable content - Boxee includes a built-in BitTorrent client (rTorrent) and a torrent RSS reader.
• Podcasts - You can stream audio and video podcasts, although you cannot yet subscribe to them.
• Internet radio - You can listen to SHOUTcast and Last.fm (no Pandora yet).
• Captioning - You can enable subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org and lyrics from LyricWiki.org.
• Social networking - You can see what your friends are watching, rate movies, TV shows, and music, and recommend content to your friends.

You can do some of this in iTunes, Apple TV, Front Row, or XBMC, but to do it all in one place, you need Boxee (watch demo).

So is Boxee the next killer app?

The short answer is, not yet. But Boxee is still an alpha product, and it’s arguably better than the competition, including iTunes 8 and XBMC, upon which Boxee is based.

And because Boxee is open-source, there’s a good chance it will get the features it needs to put it over the top. Here’s my wishlist:

1. Add true fast-forward, rewind, and scrubbing. Right now, you can only skip backward and forward 30 seconds at a time.
2. Add a resume feature for movies and TV shows, so you can pick up where you left off.
3. Fix the Music section. I’ve had Boxee for over a week and it’s still indexing my iTunes library.
4. Enable manual editing of media files (and expose file names and directories to power users). Boxee is pretty good, but it wasn’t able to find an Otis Redding documentary from 2007, and it misidentified half a dozen MP3 albums. Right now, Boxee thinks Frank Sinatra is Frankie Carl, and George Harrison is Mose Allison, and there’s no way to manually override media titles and box art.
5. Add search! I’m sure this is on Boxee’s roadmap, but when you have hundreds of artists, scrolling with a remote is tedious.
6. Add playlist support. Boxee has already said this is coming, but I hope they also include the ability to generate playlists on the fly.
7. Add a toggle fullscreen button. If you’re using a remote, you don’t want to fish out the keyboard just to press Cmd+F.
8. Get rid of the firewall nag every time Boxee starts up.
9. Add more screensaver options (e.g., box art, now playing, recommendations). The default screensaver is giving me the willies.
10. Add built-in support for CD and DVD ripping. Maybe a Handbrake plugin?

You can make your own feature requests by visiting the Boxee forum and support sites. Or send them a tweet.

I have high hopes for Boxee. As alpha software, it’s already simpler, stabler, and easier to use than other HTPC solutions. It can only get better.

Of course, there’s one problem Boxee will never solve: making it easy to connect to your TV. Unless they build a Boxee set-top box.

While looking for a way to update my Twitter and Facebook status at the same time, I came across Ping.fm. This service, still in beta, enables to you post to up to 30 social networks using email or IM.

Like most betas, many features are still under development, and documentation is sparse. However, after some trial and error, I found some good uses for it.

Text to Ping.fm

SMS isn’t supported natively, but there are  decent workarounds. I opted for the AIM TXT approach, which requires the following steps:

1. Get an AIM verification code from Ping.fm.
2. Send a text message to 246246 (AIMAIM):
   send pingfm [your_verification_code]
3. You should receive this text reply: “pingfm: (using AOL IM) Thanks! Your Ping.fm account is now set up to post messages through aim. Send me a message any time and I’ll post it for you.” At this point, you may want to add 246246 to your phone’s contacts.
4. To send a message to Ping.fm, simply text 246246 and specify pingfm as the recipient:
   send pingfm [your_status_message]

If  Step 2 doesn’t work, make sure you haven’t registered a different AIM screen name with Ping.fm. This is the mistake I made. When you send an instant message via AIM TXT, your AIM screen name is your mobile phone number (e.g., 12125551212), not your regular AIM screen name (even if you’ve associated a mobile number with your account). Unfortunately, you can only register one AIM screen name at a time with Ping.fm.

NOTE: If you’re using Facebook, you also have to install the Ping.fm application.

Phone to Ping.fm

There’s no native iPhone application for Ping.fm, but you can visit their iPhone or mobile site with your phone’s browser. This is a good option if you don’t have an unlimited text plan.

Instant Message to Ping.fm

If you’re using AIM TXT (see above), you cannot use AIM to update your Ping.fm status. But you can get verification codes for other, popular instant messaging services, such as Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger. I enabled Google Talk by following these steps:

1. Get a Jabber verification code.
2. Add pingbot@ping.fm to your Google Talk (or Gmail) buddy list.
3. Send an instant message to this new buddy containing only the Jabber verification code: 
   verify-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
4. You should receive this reply: “Thanks! Your Ping.fm account is now set up to post messages through Jabber. Send me a message any time and I’ll post it for you.”
5. You can send normal messages to this new buddy, or use a trigger to specify a specific service. For example, this message updates only your Twitter status:
   @tt Writing a blog post about Ping.fm

One nice feature of Ping.fm is the Adjust Grammar option, which you can enable in Settings. When you do this and post to Ping.fm using one of the methods above, your post is prefixed with “said:” on Facebook (as in, “Paul Newman said: Writing a blog post about Ping.fm”). Hopefully it will be possible to edit this prefix, or define different posting options using custom triggers, in the future.

I just opened a tab that crashed IE7. This time, I chose to report the error. Once the error was reported, the dialog box prompted me to “Please follow the link below for information which may prevent this problem in the future.”

Clicking the “More Information” link reopened IE7 to a page on microsoft.com with this explanation:

Problem caused by Microsoft Internet Explorer

This problem occurred because Microsoft Internet Explorer, which was created by Microsoft Corporation, was slow or unresponsive.

This type of problem occurs when a program is slow or has stopped responding and you choose to shut it down. This is also referred to as an application hang. Most of the time, there’s nothing you could have done to prevent this type of error, but there are some troubleshooting steps you can try.

Now I remember why I never click “Report Error.” Serves me right for using IE instead of Chrome.

Getting rusty with Flash authoring. Had to use Flash CS4 on a recent project and spent at least an hour searching for an elusive bug. I was adding instances of the Label component to a display list dynamically, and the last Label component kept disappearing. After a lot of trial and error, the solution was simple:

I felt like such a newbie. Why autoSize is not “left” by default is a mystery (along with the useWeakReference default).

One thing’s for sure: After working with Flex Builder for two years, Flash CS4 is painful. No code-hinting, and no internal help system. What gives? If you press F1 in Flash CS4, it launches help in your default browser. What if you don’t have a network connection? No help?

I finally convinced a few friends to buy iPhones, so here is a list of my favorite apps:

1. Simplify Media - Still my favorite, most-used application on the iPhone. I can stream music from my Mac Mini at home and listen to it anywhere with a good wi-fi or 3G connection. I hardly keep any audio files on the iPhone anymore (except for the gym).
2. Twitterific - I tried a few other Twitter apps and Twitterfic still seems the easiest and most intuitive to use. The free version has ads, but big deal.
3. Toodledo - Until Apple offers Exchange support for tasks, this is the next best thing. You sign up for a free account at Toodledo and the iPhone app is only $1.99. Todo has a better interface, and better features, but I’m not sure it’s worth five times the price. If your carrier offers an email to SMS gateway address (most do), you can receive a text message when your task is due. You can also add and retrieve tasks via Twitter.
4. Air Mouse - I bought this after Snatch because Snatch only supported Macs at the time. Absolutely essential if you’ve got a computer connected to your television. Also makes an effective device for controlling PowerPoint presentations. TIP: You can toggle play/pause on Netflix Watch Instantly using the spacebar.
5. Air Sharing - I grabbed this one while it was still free, but even at five bucks it’s still worth it. Air Sharing syncs pretty effortlessly with Mac and Windows, and supports a huge list of file formats, including iWork, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, XML, plain text, images, and media files. I use it to review presentations while commuting (too bad you can’t edit them). Better than a thumb drive, and cheaper too.
6. Evernote - Evernote is a godsend for a pack rat like me, and the first step to liberating myself from 30 open tabs in Firefox. Now I just capture what I need and save it to Evernote. Because notes are stored online, you have complete access to them from the iPhone app. The Premium version ($45/year) increases your monthly upload allowance from 40MB to 500MB, and lets you synchronize any file type.
7. 1Password - I didn’t understand the fuss about 1Password until I bought the Mac application. It’s very easy to sync to the desktop app and backup your iPhone logins. Using the embedded browser is a kludge, though. A Windows desktop version would be nice as well.
8. Stanza - This is really a tie with eReader. I prefer some of eReader’s features - such as dictionary support, highlights, and notes - but it’s much easier to find and download free books on Stanza. Plus, with Stanza Desktop, you can sync your own e-books to the iPhone in multiple formats (eReader only supports PDB and PRC).
9. AP Mobile News Network - While not as slick as the New York Times app, it loads quickly and offers two features sorely lacking in the Times: email and save. Unlike the Times, AP is also extremely responsive to feedback and updates the app frequently.
10. WordPress - Not sure why this gets so many negative reviews in the App Store, but I haven’t used it that much yet. After wrestling with Windows Mobile on a Motorola Q for two years, the ability to post blog entries directly from the iPhone seems miraculous.

Excluded from this list are Apple apps, like Google Maps and Remote.

It’s a new year, so it’s time for a new blog.

I’ve been so busy working at Schematic the last 3+ years, I haven’t had time to devote to blogging. But that is about to change.

In the future, I’ll use this blog to post thoughts about Adobe technology, the latest gadgets, and life in New York City.

Here’s to 2009! As John Lennon once said, “It can’t get no worse!” Let’s hope he was right.