As you may or may not know, Boxee (a cross-platform media center application) went into public beta a while back. Today, they released an all-new version of the beta. This new version apparently includes access to four different movie libraries (as well as all of the other features that were already part of the app).

If you haven’t checked out Boxee yet, I highly recommend you do so. While it is beta, and does have its issues, it is an awesome piece of software.

For those of you that haven’t heard, Twitter has released an official bookmarklet to allow you to tweet about just about anything you find online. While I appreciate the fact that Twitter is moving forward with tools to make it easier for its users to share information through its service (the official Twitter iPhone app, the official Twitter “Tweet” button for websites and blogs, etc.), I wish they’d put a little more work into this new bookmarklet.

Personally, I am so accustomed to using the Friendfeed bookmarklet (it’s really basically the only bookmarklet I use on a regular basis), I am disappointed that the Twitter bookmarklet doesn’t function the same way. (more…)

I honestly have no idea when this was announced, but Twitter will start disabling its “Basic Auth” on Aug. 16, 2010 (the system will be completely unavailable by Aug. 31). For Twitter users, this doesn’t really mean anything. However, for Web developers that use various interfaces and plug-ins to share information on Twitter, this is big.

The majority of API libraries and classes that were (and, as of this writing, still are) listed in the official Twitter API documentation will stop working. This change, as far as I can tell, will effect the way tweets are sent and the way tweets are received. Therefore, whether you’re trying to post tweets from an external source, or you’re simply trying to list your latest tweets, if the interface uses the old system of Basic Auth, it’s going to stop working on Aug. 31. (more…)

The other day, I noticed someone on Friendfeed posted a link to a live USB image of Google’s ChromeOS. I was a bit skeptical at first, as we’ve seen many fake builds of ChromeOS over the last year or so. However, after doing a bit of research, it appears that this is the real thing. (more…)

As you are no doubt aware, a major update for the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system was released by Apple last week. The first day it was released, I downloaded the large update file (almost 300 megabytes) and attempted to install it overnight on my iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, when I woke up in the morning, I was confronted with an iTunes error indicating that the backup was not completed successfully.

Later that evening, I tried again. I started trying to update around 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening, and finally cancelled the process around 11 p.m., having made very little progress in the backup process.

I tried a few more times over the next few days, and kept experiencing a similar problem. At one point, Windows decided to restart itself in the middle of the backup process because Windows updates had been installed.

Finally, overnight last night, I modified my Windows power settings, making sure that my computer would not go to sleep for at least four hours (just in case that was the issue) and attempted the update one more time. (more…)

So, the big news yesterday was the fact that Wordpress 3.0 (codenamed “Thelonious”) was released. For me, the major milestone from this release is the fact that WordpressMU no longer exists as a separate project. Instead, WordpressMU has been merged with the standard version of Wordpress, making it possible and easy for all Wordpress owners to manage multiple blogs/websites from a single control panel.

This release also implements a brand new default theme that was built specifically to showcase some of the really nice new template features built into Wordpress. Widget control has been improved and expanded; menus are now fully customizable from within the admin center (no more hacking theme files to get a custom menu) and more.

A few days ago, Paul Boag announced that he would not continue publishing the BoagWorld podcast past the beginning of next month. While I understand his reasoning, support his decision and am really looking forward to see what he produces in the future; I am also very sad to hear this news. The BoagWorld podcast has been an invaluable resource for me since I discovered it. (more…)

Thanks to Benjamin Golub for sharing this (at least, that’s where I first saw it). I wonder if they’ll keep this going until the World Cup is over.

Up until a few months ago, the only way to use the Quickbooks Online interface was to do so through Internet Explorer. The interface did not work at all for people using browsers other than IE, which meant that it was wholly unavailable to Linux users and Mac users (I have no idea whether it worked on Mac’s version of IE or not, but I’m fairly certain it didn’t).

Then, in October, the application was updated to begin working with Firefox on Windows and Safari on Mac. This was a step in the right direction, but still didn’t make the interface available to Linux users. (more…)

One of many new features in CSS3 that has the Web development and design world clamoring is the introduction (well, reintroduction and standardization, really) of embedded fonts. Commonly referred to as the @font-face property, CSS3 will allow you to use non-standard fonts on your Web pages without having to resort to using images. Instead, you’ll upload the font file (in most cases, a Truetype Font [TTF] file) to a space on the Web, then use the @font-face property to import that font file as a resource for the page. (more…)