Back from the Boxee NYC Meetup

As you know, Gadget Wisdom was represented at tonight’s Boxee New York City meetup. We did a little tweeting from there, but tried to focus on the presentation.

Now, this meet was chock full of goodies, networking and general wonder. Direct link to the video.

• Boxee is unveiling a new API(application programming interface) “The new API enables developers to build apps using XML pages and Python scripts. developers can now do pretty much whatever they want UI-wise and control the data and metadata around the media.” This will be developed more over time, but it simplifies third-party development in Boxee, making it a community where anyone can contribute.
• The new version includes an enhanced version of the Boxee browser. It is based in the XUL Framework…the basis for the Firefox and related Mozilla products. It will display any full web page, and try to play the video on it, and try to do so in full screen.
• The launch of additional content, including Pandora radio, which was apparently its number one most requested music site to integrate.
• The CEO of Boxee promised the application would be free forever, although extensions that allow access to paid content may come.
• He also said they are not interested in sharing user data for profit.
• Adult Filters and Privacy controls will be enhanced in the future.

Now, you can read the CNet report of the event if you’d like an alternate view.

We did get a chance to ask a question, got a free Size M t-shirt, and almost sung on stage during the talent competition for a free Mac Mini. Our question is bad news for us. Supporting alternate Linux distributions is not in the Boxee gameplan. They’ll be leaving that up to third-parties. So much for Boxee on Fedora support. We’d hope they’d express willingness to incorporate specific fixes for that into the Boxee source code…so Boxee under alternate distributions can find the libraries it is looking for without a whole bunch of symbolic links.

Even worse, the Linux version is behind the other versions, as the Boxee developers seem to be focusing on the Mac version…not surprising considering Mac users appear to be their largest group. Boxee hopes to move from Alpha software to Beta by the end of the third quarter. Beta means increased stability, and a redesign of the basic elements of Boxee. Once the framework is at a certain level, it will be declared ready to move closer to the mainstream.

In the meantime, if you have a Mac or Ubuntu, try it out. It should work mostly out of the box with these OSes. The Mac seems best supported though.