Boxee has just pushed out a new update with some new features to include NHL and more file control.

NHL GameCenter LIVE™ on Boxee

First and foremost we’re excited to announce that NHL GameCenter LIVE™ is now available on Boxee.  Subscribers to the monthly/annual subscription service ($19.95 / $79 respectively) can now watch great Hockey games & fights in HD (where available) on Boxee.

Boxee Beta Updates

In addition to this great new content partnership, we are also releasing the next version of the Boxee Beta, which now includes:

File Identification Progress

Easily see how many files Boxee is scanning, has identified, and doesn’t recognize within your media collection.  Check the status from any menu sidebar (TV shows, Movies, Music) or from the Media settings menu (Settings -> Media).

Manual Movie & TV Show identification
Help Boxee identify your personal media by telling it what’s in your collection.  To change incorrectly labeled files select the movie or TV show, then click the “drivers license with a circle in the top right corner”  icon on the right end of the pop-up menu.

Find and identify unresolved files by going to the “Files” menu, and selecting the “unresolved” folder from the bottom of the list.  Select files and follow the instructions above to label them properly.  You’ll now be able to put in movie names and TV show seasons and episodes to ensure your collection is pristine.

Facebook & Twitter in your Boxee feed
In addition to pushing recommendations to your social networks, you can see recommendations from friends on Facebook & Twitter from within Boxee.  Shared videos appear automatically in your feed with an icon on the right to let you know where they are from.  Set up this new option from the web in your service settings for Facebook & Twitter.

New & Improved RSS Management
We’ve created a brand new way to manage, discover and play RSS feeds in Boxee.  First, check out the new management & discovery console on our website.  Search, arrange by category or sort through the most popular, top rated, new, and HD feeds available on Boxee.  Then use the RSS feeds App to play back your favorites.

Bug Fixes and Fixes and Fixes, and Fixes!
We’ve been able to address hundreds of bugs in this version of Boxee.  Thanks to everyone who helped us out by submitting issues to our support team.

With the popular torrent site ISOHunt redirecting its US users to a new “lite” version which basically renders it useless to US users due to the crackdown by MPAA, I have been on the search for a new service to use. Like many people have done in the past I’m sure we will all just find a new source or service to use instead of giving up and going fully legit.

If you ask me this is just power and money hungry “media whores” trying to get every penny from anyone and everyone. If you go to other countries like Iraq, you can purchase illegal copies of DVDs at 10 for $5 way before the movie even gets released to DVD much less theater. Makers of movies make enough money as it is off of box office profits and need to let us (We the people) be more free (In a free country).

FIRST ALTERNATIVE

So now the question is what are we going to use? I made a post earlier about how to proxy your torrents to better protect you from your ISP and help you search torrent sites that would regularly be blocked by your ISP. But unfortunately there is filters now being used by the popular torrent sites, filtering out torrents based on a word database called FileRights.  In the future they plan to use FileRights but have not yet. Below you will find a list of replacements I found so far. The list from top to bottom is my favorite to least favorite.

1. http://extratorrent.com/
2. http://torrentz.com/
3. http://thepiratebay.org/

SECOND ALTERNATIVE

Another alternative that you can still use until they and if they start using FileRights is to use a proxy server located in another country. I suggest you use a Canadian proxy as they are the closest to the United States. There are two ways to do this by altering your proxy settings in your browser or by going to an actual proxy site.

Proxy By Browser Settings List (Advanced)

Proxy By Site  List (No Setup)

Please let me know in a comment if there is anything better out there!

If you have ever connected a second screen or monitor to your Mac and don’t like how the Apple menu does not extend to both screens. SecondBar is a Tool which allows you to have more than one menubar in Mac OS X. With this you no longer have to drag your mouse across multiple screens to do a file, copy or file, print or open a new browser window.

To run secondbar just simply download the .dmg file and move it into your “Applications” folder. Once it is in your applications folder double click it to run and you should now see an additional bar on your other screen(s).

Looking for a free way to serve media to your PS3 such as Movies? At my house I have a Windows Server setup and a couple TB hard drives full of software, music, movies and other types of documents. It was great for sharring them between computers but I really didn’t have a way to view them on the PS3. I looked all around for solutions and found this free piece of software that runs on Windows, Linux and MAC OS. It may not be feature packed but the best thing about PS3 Media Server is its free!

PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant Upnp Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration. It’s backed up with the powerful Mplayer/FFmpeg packages.

URL: http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

Current features

• Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there’s an automatic refresh also.
• Real-time video transcoding of MKV/FLV/OGM/AVI, etc.
• Direct streaming of DTS / DTS-HD core to the receiver
• Remux H264/MPEG2 video and all audio tracks to AC3/DTS/LPCM in real time with tsMuxer when H264 is PS3/Level4.1 compliant
• Full seeking support when transcoding
• DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
• OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding
• Thumbnail generation for Videos
• You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3!
• Simple streaming of formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG)
• Display camera RAWs thumbnails (Canon / Nikon, etc.)
• ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders
• Support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
• Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer
• Podcasts audio/ Video feeds support
• Basic Xbox360 support
• FLAC 96kHz/24bits/5.1 support
• Windows Only: DVR-MS remuxer and AviSynth alternative transcoder support

If you have ever wanted to look up a number by dialing 411 but hated it when you got your bill and found out you owned $2 for the phone call then this service provided by Google is for you.

Goog-411 is a free 411 information service that anyone can use on any phone by calling 1-800-Goog-411.

All you have to do is call 1-800-Goog-411 and state the business and location. From there Google will connect you or give you their address at no additional cost…FREE!

This has been out for awhile but I’m pretty sure that not everyone knows about it so lets spread the word. If you don’t already know Microsoft is offering Windows development and design tools free to students of Universities, Collges and Grade schools.

Here is an interview I found with Bill Gates talking about DreamSpark so you all know it is legal and legit.

Although the title talks about Window Server 2008, they offer a lot more tools and software other than WS 2008. Some other software they offer for free is Visual Studio 2010, Server 2003, SQL Express and Developer Edition and Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 Pro Edition.

To be able to take advantage of this offer you must be a student and your school must be registered with Microsoft. From there you just login to www.dreamspark.com using your Live account (@hotmail.com or @live.com) and verify you are a student with your school. You then are able to download ISO files to burn to CDs and generate Product Keys. Although once you are no longer a student you are not allowed to use their service you can still use any products that you have downloaded.