Boxee is a platform that is really going places. At one point it was a mainly for enthusiasts willing to spend the time on installing it and setting it up on their own hardware. Now it is moving towards mass appeal with the recent announcement of a Boxee Box, which users will just be able to plug in and go, and Boxee payments, which may make the platform more appealing to content providers. A great starting point before getting stuck into full scale Boxee application development is creating a simple RSS application that will just make a feed of a podcast available and give it presence in the world of Boxee.

A lot has happened since I wrote my post back in June about setting up Ubuntu and Boxee on the Acer Aspire Revo; a new version of Ubuntu has been released and today (7^th January 2009) the new beta version of Boxee was officially released to the public. The new version is a major overhaul and represents quite a different, enhanced user experience from the alpha. So I thought I would do a new version of the post to reflect these changes. Fortunately, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) has introduced many changes that make getting the Revo up and running much easier than under the previous release of Ubuntu.

We all know that it is important to write documentation for our code. It is not the most exciting aspect of programming but sadly it is needed for those times when we have to fix or change something six months after writing it and have no recollection of how the code works or maybe of writing it at all. Fortunately there is help at hand, you can document a lot of your PHP code semi-automatically with a handy tool called PhpDocumentor. If you have programmed in Java before and used Javadoc this will be very familiar to you. It is not readily available pre-packaged through apt, but fortunately it is reasonable straightforward to install.

ITV is the main terrestrial commercial TV network in the UK. They have a TV catch up service called ITV Player which somewhat unusually delivers programmes not using Flash but instead Microsoft Silverlight, there is a port to Linux called Moonlight, but it doesn't work for me. Today though I found out that the Scottish version of ITV; STV has its own TV-on-demand catchup service, and a rather good one too. Programmes are delivered through Flash, so they can be viewed on Linux, but that is not all; I noticed that the site also has RSS feeds, which is quite unusual for a TV-on-demand service. Naturally I wondered if this feed could be adapted for use on Boxee, so I need never miss X-Factor again.

If you change your login password you might find that you get prompted for your "default keyring" password, this can be annoying, and sadly it isn't obvious how to change this to be the same as your new login password (or another password if you are being ultra secure!). Even searching the web can take a while to find a solution, but fortunately it was out there courtesy of a commenter named "David" in this post:

Netbooks are very useful devices, not just for web surfing and looking at your email for for all sorts of different purposes, some more obvious than others. These devices are all about mobility, but while you are out and about there could be situations where setting up a wireless network to connect a group of machines might be handy and of course Internet access makes this even more useful. Maybe you have a device you would like to use with the Internet while you are away, but it only has WiFi connection (e.g. some portable media players like the iPod Touch) and you cannot plug your 3G mobile broadband modem into it. As long as you have 3G coverage you can have a WiFi hotspot wherever you go, and you don't need to bring a dedicated router as a netbook powered by Ubuntu (or Easy Peasy) can easily fulfill this function.

** UPDATE 7th January 2009 ***

See my new post for details on how to install the Boxee Beta and Ubuntu Karmic on the Revo:
How to install Ubuntu 9.10 and the Boxee Beta on an Acer Aspire Revo (including 64 bit option)

The details below are now out of date, but are still useful if you wish to install Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on a Revo.

***

The Revo is a very new piece of hardware and features some cutting edge technology so installing Ubuntu on it is not completely straightforward as not many people own these units and have had a chance to make them work out of the box with this very popular Linux distribution. However, it can be done and the unit makes a fantastic Ubuntu machine and if you add Boxee a great entertainment centre for your living room. The first thing to do is to put a copy of the Ubuntu 9.04 desktop live CD image on a USB memory stick. Do this by visiting:http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and selecting the 32 bit desktop edition. Once downloaded you copy it to a USB stick by using the USB Startup disk creator located under System → Administration. The task of installing centres around three areas: getting Ubuntu on the machine, getting the graphics to work (properly) and getting the sound to work (at all).

The recent release of Ubuntu 9.04 (a.k.a Jaunty) saw the release of the usual desktop and server editions but also a new edition: Netbook Remix. Confusingly we have all being talking about Netbook Remix for some time, meaning the distinctive interface that makes the most of the limited screen space on a netbook, but here we mean Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) in the sense of an installation image that contains the entire operating system, including the Netbook Remix interface so you can easily install it on your netbook. This was a gap that was filled by popular derivative distributions such as Easy Peasy and Eeebuntu. I've been trying it out on my Asus EEE PC 701.

Although we all have our favourite Linux distributions, and mine is most definitely Ubuntu, it is often the case that in the workplace we have to learn another distribution, and while that is still Linux is may operate in a way that is quite different to what we are used to. A common workplace Linux distribution is RedHat Enterprise Linux which is supplied complete with a support package. The problem here is that if you want to install it to just learn about it, the price tag might put you off (it currently starts at $349). There is a related free version called Fedora, but this has a slightly different focus, where RedHat goes for stability over features, Fedora is more cutting edge. The result is that the two may not be the same, and depending on what you want to do, Fedora might not provide you with the knowledge you need to work with the RedHat environment. Help is at hand though, RedHat provide the source code to their distribution, which, thanks to open source licensing can be reused.

If you have made the move to digital TV you might be familiar with the “red button” service, the idea of pressing the red button on your remote control to take you into digital interactive services. These are usually the modern equivalent of teletext from the old analogue days but can be a little more adventurous with services such as news or sport “multiscreen” services where you can choose a video you want to watch. Various technologies make these services possible, they all include ways to display information sent over the airwaves and also provide ways to show information provided over the Internet (if available on the set top box you are using). If you are using Ubuntu (or any Linux machine) you can get hold of software that will allow you to experiment with an open standard in this area called MHEG-5.