What is Boxee? Well, Boxee is a must have application for anyone who loves television, movies, music, and pictures. In a nut shell, Boxee is a beautifully designed application that was created bring your digital media content from your computer to your TV. Whether you download movies illegally, stream them from Netflix, or even pull them in from free online sources all over the net; Boxee will make life easier for you.

Design

One of the many things that makes Boxee stand out from it competitors is its design. Boxee was designed with ease of use, beauty, and the Apple remote all in mind. The ease of use factor is just that. It is easy to use. Menus are laid out nice and orderly. Everything is easy to find, from a TV show on your hard drive to a episode of The Office from Hulu.com. I pointed out beauty, because Boxee stays faithful the the Apple beautiful design principles. Buttons are very large and colorful, text has nice hover and glow effects, colors flow beautiful, and finally, slide transitions are used when switching from page to page. While these might not seem important to a review, I find design a major factor in how much I like an application.

To me, 1Password is the single greatest application on OS X. 1Password is an application that allows you to securely use one master password to access all your web accounts, credit card data, and online identities from your Mac and iPhone. It is as easy as command + |.

What It Does

1Password has 3 main things I consider to be its core functions. The first one is a secure password manager. 1Pasword creates a secure database of all your web passwords and organizes them in a very clear and easy to manage interface. It also helps you to generate very secure passwords all from inside your browser.

The second core functionality associated with 1Password is a great form filler. You can create identities in the application where you fill out names, addresses, phone numbers, emails… Then when you go to sign up for a new web application, all you have to do is click the 1P button and import all your identity info into the form.

The third core functionality is one I don’t really use, but I know people that do, and that is the wallet! This allows you to securely store credit card information in a nice and organized database. It works with credit cards, membership id cards, web services, and bank account numbers.

As promised, Apple has released the iPhone 2.1 firmware update this Friday. Installation took about 20 minutes including a slow download period probably associated with the high number of people trying to download the update.

List of Fixes

- decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
- significantly improve battery life for most users
- dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
- improve email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
- faster installation of 3rd party applications
- fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
- improved performance of text messaging
- faster loading and searching of contacts
- improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
- repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
- option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
- Genius playlist creation

First Thoughts

The first thing I noticed is the major improvement in over all speed. When scrolling the different home screens, and the contacts list, lag is virtually gone. The backing up process that use to take upwards of 30 to 45 minutes is down to about 5 or 10 minutes.

I will start by saying that I am a huge supporter of Pandora. When I heard about this Pandora like service being built into iTunes, I am stoked because Pandora is looking like it might go out of business. I was very hopeful that iTunes 8 would fill the void in my life that is going to be created when/if Pandora disappears.

I have been playing with iTunes 8 and the new Genius functionality, and I am not very impressed. I like the new viewing options available in iTunes 8, and the new visualizations are stunning, but iTunes Genius is a different story.

iTunes Genius goes through and analyzes your music collection when you first install iTunes 8. From there, it allows you to click the Genius button when you select a song, and it will auto create a playlist filling with a preset number of songs that iTunes believe are along the same style of music. Well, it doesn’t work. I am going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, that this service will improve once more people experiment with it, but for now, it is no good. Let me give you and example:

As you can see I created a iTunes Genius playlist based on the song I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry, and what is this, Disturbed showed up in the results? Those songs could not be more opposite.

What are your thoughts on iTunes 8 and the new Genius integration? Have you had any strange results appear when using the Genius playlist creator?

Just a quick video to show off the new iTunes 8 visualizer. Steve never mentioned it at the “Let’s Rock” event, but it is new, and pretty amazing. Sorry about the low quality.

UPDATE: I also put a copy of the video on YouTube by request of some of my readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azaO7xsksM4

So I have received a couple of emails and comments from people asking what apps I have actually purchased for my Macbook Pro and my iPhone, so I decided to write a post letting everyone know what apps I think are just so totally awesome that I have actually spent money on them.

I will start with my Macbook Pro. I have had my MBP for a while now, so I have really had the chance to explore a lot of the apps that are made for OS X. I was a windows man up until I purchased this machine so I had ZERO Mac OS X apps in my collection.

Adobe Photoshop CS2

I lucked out with this program. As many of you know, Photoshop runs for about $650 at most locations. Well I was able to snag a CS2 version (slightly outdated, currently on CS3) on Craigslist for just $100.00. That is a heck of a deal! I use Photoshop regularly so it was my very first purchase after I got my new MBP.

Price Paid: $100.00
Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html

So, what is GrabUp? GrabUp is screen capture product from a London, England based software developer. GrabUp is a screen capture program unlike any other screen capture program out there. It that makes taking quick screen shots a snap. Prior to getting GrabUp, to take a screen capture, I would:

Command+Shift+4 > Open up my FTP program > Connect to my FTP server > Browse to the folder I want to upload it in > Upload it > Open FireFox > Browse to the image > Copy the link > Paste it in an email, IM, or else where.

Well, with GrabUp I:

Command+Shift+4 > Command+V to paste the link to the screen capture.

As you all already know, I am loving my new iPhone. While the phone itself is awesome, the true enjoyment of the phone comes from the third party apps. Below I am going to walk you through the useful apps I have choose to follow me everywhere I go. This list is only the useful apps; I am going to review games in Part 3 of my iPhone coverage.

If you think I am missing some great apps, please let me know so I can check them out.

WeatherBug

The default weather app on the iPhone SUCKS! It is missing a lot of information that one might want when looking for a weather report. WeatherBug gives you all the normal stuff like current temp, heat index, humidity, and a few day out forecast, but what I really find useful is that WeatherBug allows you to view radar maps that use the Multi-Touch pitch zoom functionality.

While I have had some issues with the radar maps not loading completely, it has not really bugged me. WeatherBug also allows you to view weather webcams around your area. Also, you can track multiple locations very easily.

iTunes Download Link: WeatherBug

Twitteriffic

As most of you know, I am a twitter fanatic. I love posting tweets when I am away from my computer. I have been doing this for sometime via text message, but now I can easily post tweets without using up my text messages.

Twitteriffic has some nice extras too. You can post photo tweets directly from Twitteriffic as it is integrated with the Twitpic.com service. Twitteriffic also uses the built in iPhone GPS to update your profile on Twitter with your exact location. I find this to be a little to intrusive on my privacy. I don’t want people knowing exactly where I am all the time so I don’t use this function.

There are 2 versions of this app, a free version and a pay, I use the free because well, it is free. The only real difference is that with the free version, you see an ad appear in your Twitteriffic home screen. This does not bug, because the ads are tastefully done, and placed in non annoying locations.

Additional Note: Twitteriffic is very complex and might be overwhelming at first, but read the hints and give yourself some time to figure out how it all works then you will love it!

Associated with: http://www.Twitter.com/
iTunes Download Link: Twitteriffic

A few days ago, I reviewed my first ever purchased program, Media Link, for my new Macbook Pro. Well today I am going to review another product I decided to purchase; it is called Awaken from Embraceware. Ultimately it is an alarm clock and sleep timer for any Mac and iTunes. It is very customizable in that it has many options to set from volume, to playlist, and more.

I have mainly been using the program as a sleep timer so my Macbook Pro will sleep after a specific amount of time. This allows me to fall asleep with my iTunes playing but not worry about running my laptop all night long. I created a custom playlist called sleep, set the timer to 1 hour and that is it! 1 hour later my MBP goes to sleep!

I use a real alarm clock to wake me up so I have not played with the wake functions, but I know it will wake up a Mac from sleep to activate the alarm clock. It also allows you to set a different alarm for each day, and you can completely customize each day!

It is a very beautify written application. The style is at par with Mac standards, and it is very tough with customization options and advanced functionality. I have only touched on all this program has to offer, for more information please browse over to http://www.embraceware.com/software/awaken/. It is a messily $12.95 and comes with updates for life! For many years I looked for something like this on Windows, but never had any luck. Awaken works on both Intel and Power Macs, but sorry no Windows!

Price: $12.95
Trial: YES, 14 Days (Full Functionality)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Official Site: http://www.embraceware.com/software/awaken/

About 2 weeks ago I purchased a brand new Macbook Pro. I am totally new to OS X so I am discovering all kinds of new goodies. One of which is called MediaLink by NullRiver Inc. MediaLink bridges the gap between the PlayStation 3 and Apple’s OS X.

The PlayStation 3 doubles as a media server, with Windows this is done very easily using Window’s Media Player, but with Mac, this is a problem. MediaLink turns your Mac into a media server that your PS3 can see. It is very easy to setup, and runs hidden in the background.

One of the greatest functions of it is how well it organizes your files, if you want to watch a episode of Diggnation a video podcast you have in iTunes, then you just select iTunes > Podcast > Diggnation just like in iTunes, it even provides a Quick Look like preview!

MediaLink is available for $20.00 from NullRiver.com. A trial is available but it is limited to 30 minutes of continuous use. I downloaded the trial and ended up purchasing the product with in 20 minutes! It works great, it might even work better then Windows Media Player did!

The only negative I have found is that sometimes the PlayStation 3 has a issue seeing the MediaLink server. This is solved in 2 seconds by opening the MediaLink preferance panel, and stopping the server then restarting it!