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This is a guide that, if followed, will unchain your Apple TV from its cruel iTunes tether, turning it into the useful living room conduit of music, video and web-based content it should have been all along via the media center software Boxee. Boxee can be installed fairly easily via the ATV's USB port to bring Hulu and Comedy Central streaming, playback of any video or music file anywhere on your network in virtually any file type imagineable, and a bevy of internet A/V sources like Flickr, Last.fm, NPR and BBC podcasts and tons of others—all upping the usefulness and fun of Apple's notoriously underachieving box by a factor of 10, easily. If you have an ATV, Boxee is a must-install, and it's 100% free. Let's get started.
The stock Apple TV has never been able to decide what it's supposed to do. Is it a device to store all your videos? Its built-in hard drive would suggest yes, but the fact that everything needs to be piped through iTunes makes this a hassle if you store your videos in any other way. And why are we downloading and storing anyway? Streaming is the way things are headed, and for streaming, Apple TV doesn't make a ton of sense, especially when a box a quarter its size and a less than half its price can bring Netflix's massive library into your living room with zero download delays and zero added cost, soon in HD, even.
Aside from adding the golden goose of Hulu streaming, Boxee's other main advantage is freeing your Apple TV from its direct connection with your iTunes library. No longer will it be necessary to convert all of your video files into iTunes compatible formats to get them to your TV—Boxee will let your Apple TV read just about any video codec you can throw at it (full list of codecs here - only thing it chokes on is 1080p video; 720p works fine) from any computer or network-attached storage device on your network, or read files off the Apple TV's own hard disk—all while leaving the default OS untouched and 100% functional. So let's do this.
What You'll Need:
• Apple TV with software version 2.0 or higher
• A USB flash drive 512MB or larger
• ATV USB Creator [download: 1.0.b7 version - Mac only, for now]
• An invite into Boxee's semi-public alpha (use this link especially for Giz readers to jump the line a bit)
Prepare Your USB Drive
Just like the iPhone, the Apple TV is basically an OS X computer (running a 1GHz Intel processor), so Boxee installs just like a regular desktop app in the Applications folder, which is hidden normally. Why Apple hasn't opened up the Apple TV to third party developers is anyone's guess, but thankfully, with a prepared USB stick it's all pretty painless.
1. After unpacking the ATV USB Creator application, start it up with the USB flash drive you intend to use mounted. Select "ATV-Patchstic" as your installation option and "Boxee for Mac" as the installation type. At the bottom, select the BSD location of your flash disk. You can find this with System Profiler under the USB section (probably a good idea to unmount any other USB drives so you don't accidentally wipe them).
2. Click "Create Using ->" and your USB stick will be formatted and loaded up with the appropriate software.
3. Power off your Apple TV (by unplugging it), drop your USB patchstick into the ATV's USB slot, and plug it back in. You'll see Tux and a bunch of code streaming on your screen as the software installs.
4. When it's done, remove the USB stick and restart the ATV.
Download Boxee via the Boxee Launcher
5. The USB patchstick installs a launcher that can then pull down the latest version of Boxee from the web. The first thing you'll want to do, then, to ensure you have the latest version, is update the launcher itself. Go to the new option "Boxee" in the ATV menu, choose "Update" and then update the Launcher.
6. Now, go to the new Boxee menu and choose "Update" -> "Boxee alpha..." to pull down and install Boxee itself. Once it installs, select "Boxee" from the new menu "Boxee/XBMC" menu to start it up.
Configure Boxee
7. Enter the user account you registered on boxee.tv (via our invite link above). Boxee also adds some nifty social networking features—if you have any buddies also using it, you can see what they've recently watched, added to their collections, or recommended to you via Boxee's home screen.
8. First thing you'll want to do once you're in is make sure Boxee displays perfectly on your screen. Settings are accessible by pressing "left" on the ATV remote at any time, so go to "Settings - Appearance - Video Calibration..." to set overscan and sizing options.
Add Your Sources
Right now, under the "Videos" menu, you can browse and stream the complete offerings from Hulu, Comedy Central, Revision3, and a ton of other web video sources. But Boxee really shines when it can play your media files from anywhere on your network.
Add an SMB Share
This can be a network attached storage drive (you've read our guide for getting the best NAS setup, right?) or simply a shared folder on a Mac or PC on your network (to share a folder in OS X, enable File Sharing in your Sharing settings, enable SMB shares under "Options" and add your media folder. Boxee will then auto detect your shares.
9. In Boxee's Settings menu, select "Media Sources and Applications -> Network Sources" and choose "Add New Source." Select your share in the menu that comes up and mark it wither Video, Music or Photos. Boxee will now monitor this folder and add any TV shows and movies it recognizes (complete with cover art, episode descriptions, and the like) to the main videos menu (Boxee's full of little surprises like this). It won't catch everything though, so you can always access your added folders manually by choosing "Sources" under the main Video menu.
Access Apple TV via SSH For Copying Media Files
Aside from streaming from SMB shares, Boxee can also of course play files stored locally in its own file system. You can connect to the Apple TV via SSH/SFTP for copying files directly over your network and accessing your Apple TV's main file system.
10. In an FTP program like Transmit or Cyberduck (but using SFTP), connect to appletv.local with the username and password both set to "frontrow" - this will log you in to your Apple TV's file system, which has a structure exactly like OS X's. You can also connect via SSH from the terminal if you prefer the geekier side.
11. In the folder /Users/frontrow you will find folders labeled Movies, Music and Pictures. Any media added to these folders will be automatically recognized and playable after copying.
Torrent RSS
Yeah, Boxee can also download Torrents. It comes with a listing of public domain movie and TV Torrents under the "Public Torrents" source, but you can also have your Apple TV download whatever Torrents you want.
12. To add a Torrent to Boxee's download manager, simply copy the .torrent file to the Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/Torrents folder using the SFTP technique above and it will immediately begin downloading. Awesome.
Uninstalling All Traces of Boxee
Should you want to wipe your machine totally clean of any Boxee related tinkering, it's easy. Fire up a Terminal and type in the following commands, each on their own line:
ssh frontrow@appletv.local
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Boxee.app/
sudo rm -rf /Applications/XBMC.app/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/XBMCLauncher.frappliance/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/BOXEE/
rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/XBMC/
What's Next For Boxee
Boxee is on the move. Over the course of three alphas I've used (I can't believe this is alpha software) over only the last month or so, this thing has improved by incredible bounds—interface is getting better, weirdness and inconsistencies getting less common, all good signs.
Eventually, Boxee wants to be in set top boxes and on every platform (Windows is coming before the end of the year)—since it supports practically every audio and video codec known, it's aiming to be the Firefox of multi-platform connected AV setups, featuring plug-ins and add-ons of its own. It doesn't support DRM of any kind, so don't hold your breath for Boxee to be picked up by any of the majors. Fine with me.
Feature wise, Netflix streaming (yessss) and ABC.com are first on the Boxee folks' list.
Boxee's an open source app, so its forums are a lively place to ask for help and suggest more features to the main developers, who hang out there often. If you run into any bumps, that's the place.
It looks like the reason Gibson's self-tuning Robot guitar had a limited run is that the legendary guitar innovator had a much more insane second stage already blueprinted up: Gibson's Dark Fire Les Paul-style digital guitar is the crowning shred-related scientific achievement of our time.
Think of it as the Robot plus the Moog synth guitar rolled into one. First and foremost, it's a guitarist's guitar, with three different kind of pickups—a humbucker, a single-coil and a bridge-mounted piezo acoustic—all capable of contributing their sound to an original, organic blend of totally real guitar noise.
Having anchored itself firmly in Gibson's traditions, it's also got some crazy new stuff. Like the Robot, it self-tunes (now up to 500 times on a single battery charge), and using the "Chameleon Tone Technology" it is capable of producing "every imaginable guitar sound," says Gibson.
The company is quite proud of the Master Control Knob—presumably with a bit of a Tron shoutout there—though I can only imagine that the "sophisticated full color matrix display featuring LEDs and high-tech light pipe technology" takes a little bit of a hike up the learning curve.
Those who know of Les Paul's guitar innovations will appreciate that Gibson is carrying on his tradition of complication as a necessary means for cooler guitar tech. Some of Les' personal guitars had tons of mostly unmarked switches on them, not to mention a few boxes off to the side.
Speaking of boxes, a lot of the digital mojo is facilitated by the guitar's interface, the Robot Interface Pack, which has jacks on the front for the guitar and headphones. On the rear there's a FireWire connector (hear that, new MacBook shoppers?) and a hex connector, which can be adapted for MIDI output. The good news for suckers who bought the first-gen Robot is that the upgrade will be available to them at a price close to cost. (My guess is they'll make the money on labor when you take your Robot in for the upgrade.)
Though Gibson won't promise "infinite sustain" like Moog, it does say that its body design makes "the Dark Fire one of the best-sustaining Les Pauls ever produced." Cool. [Gibson]
Hundreds if not thousands of observers have already noted the key role that the Internet and social media played in the successful campaign of Barack Obama. But when he’s President, how will he utilize the hundreds of thousands of MySpace friends, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, My.BarackObama.com members, and SMS opt-ins (just to name a few points of presence) to advance his policies and politics?
First off, Obama needs to decide that he wants to make social media tools a permanent part of his political strategy. This seems like a given – the tools he used (along with several new ones most likely) will certainly play a big part his 2012 re-election bid and that of whoever challenges him – but to-date, maintaining this massive social media program has been the role of volunteers and campaign staffers. MySpace and Facebook weren’t even a blip on the radar when Bush won re-election in 2004 – creating full-time positions within The White House to manage social media would be a first, but presumably, something we’ll soon see.
So far, Obama’s social media tools have been all about organizing campaigners and viral marketing. But now that he’s on his way to the presidency and no longer a campaigner, Tweets about upcoming rallies and embedding Obama speeches around the Web suddenly isn’t very useful. So how does he change the way he uses these tools once he’s in The White House? A few thoughts:
Calls to Service
Obama has often talked about a call to service during his campaign – things like expanding the Peace Corps and offering tax credits in exchange for public service. Why not allow users of MyBarackObama to utilize the platform to organize community service projects? Use Twitter and SMS to alert people to opportunities to give back in their own communities or when national tragedy strikes. Utilize Facebook to get the word out about charitable events. The tools and the users are already in place.
Rather than requiring people to be so proactive about doing good, Obama’s social media reach allows them to be reactive – staying informed of things going on in their communities, organizing people that can help, and then pitching in – all from the comfort of their personal computer.
Calls to Your Congressmen
With the shift of both The White House and Congress to a Democratic majority, you can expect to see lots of new legislation over the next four years. Obama’s social media platform offers an amazing opportunity to get people more involved in their government, by keeping them abreast of issues and urging them to contact their representatives to push policy forward.
After all – this is what representative government is supposed to be about – but, think about it, when was the last time you talked to your Congressman (or at least one of their handlers)? Obama can leverage social media to make people much more involved in the process of bills becoming laws, and encourage his supporters to pressure their representatives into supporting his policies.
Calls for Re-Election
Needless to say, Obama’s social media arsenal will soon need to be put to use for his 2012 re-election campaign. Campaigns for this past election started nearly two years ago, and that’s not likely to change in 2012 as Republicans look to gain back what they’ve lost. The key here is for Obama’s team to keep up with the new tools that will best drive enthusiasm and ultimately get people to the polls. Most of the tools that were so key in this year’s campaign didn’t even exist in 2004, and we’re likely to say the same in 2012 as we analyze the services the candidates are using to drive their online campaign efforts.
An Amazing Opportunity
In a quick poll of my Twitter followers, a few people immediately replied to my question of “how will Obama utilize Twitter?” with calls for more transparency in government. While I don’t expect to see tweets from @barackobama like “Reading the President’s daily briefing from CIA. Yikes!,” the opportunities outlined above would be game changing for America, and hopefully get us all – who are still clearly somewhat divided among party lines (53 to 46 percent is no endearing sign of unity in my opinion) – a bit more involved in our democracy.
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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Change.gov: Obama’s Campaign Slogan Becomes a Website
Obama on LinkedIn
Obama Does the Twitter
The Final Online Push for Swing State Votes in the Presidential Race
On YouTube, YouChoose Obama
Barack Obama’s MySpace Ambitions
Make Your Own Obama Logo, With Your Face
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Netflix, Inc., the world's largest online movie rental servi...
Slowly but surely, iPhone versions of popular Web applications are coming in; I don’t doubt that in a year’s time you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t have its iPhone counterpart.
The latest app to adorn your iPhone screen is Google Earth, the virtual 3D world atlas we’ve learned to love on our desktops. Like all other iPhone applications, it’s available through the applications store; it started rolling in on Sunday and is now available for almost everyone, depending on your time zone.
The interesting question about this application is, of course, how did Google take advantage of iPhone’s capabilities when they created the interface for the app, and the answer is: beautifully. Besides the standard panning and multitouch zooming, you can tilt your iPhone to change the viewing angle or switch it to horizontal view to see a wider picture. Furthermore, both Wikipedia and Panoramio layers of bookmarks are included (you can turn them on and off in the settings), and offline mode also works. if you continue using the application without being connected to a network, it will use cached imagery you’ve previously viewed. Finally, there’s the standard search, available through an icon in the upper left corner, which works pretty much like in the desktop version.
Take a look at the video presentation of Google Earth for iPhone in the video below.
[image credit: CNET]
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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Terrorists Using Google Earth to Target Israel
Google’s Earth Day Mashup: Maps + YouTube
Google Earth and NASA Complete Project
Google Earth Enterprise Version Update Released
Google Earth Shows Real-Time Traffic
Google Earth Comes To Your Browser
Google Earth Updates Images
