The good folks at engadgetHD have reported that Boxee has inked a deal with a soon  to be revealed “hardware” partner.  Boxee is a HTPC software program that was born out of the XMBC project that was first created for use on the Xbox.  It has become a favourite with many home theatre fans and continues to impress casual users and technology experts alike.   You can watch HD content, stream tv shows and podcasts, play music and look at photos all wrapped up in unique GUI.  There are many different platforms that are similar to Boxee, my favourite is the Plex Media Centre for the Mac OS X, but none of them incorporate a social media component.  So if you want to see what your friends or family are watching then Boxee might be the program for you.  It will be interesting to see what a family room will look like in five years with all of these entertainment devices merging into one.

[read]

Update: New York Times did a great little ditty on Boxee vs Roku [read]

The smaller form factor PC is starting to become competitive.  Dell has jumped into the high definition HTPC market with the new Dell Zino HD.  I have been using a mac mini as my HTPC for about a few  years now and I hated the fact it was neglected for so long by Apple.  With this new competitive market and the fact that everyone and their grandmother has a flat screen tv I think you will be seeing a lot more small form factor pcs targeting the all in one home theatre market. Check out all the specs and pricing at the Dell website. [dell]

Tweet! Tweet! That’s right, apparently Toronto is all a twittering. According to the Globe and Mail Toronto is the Twitter capital of Canada and we place eighth on a list of the top 30 Twitter locations. I actually started my twitter account at the beginning of the month when I was in France for a music conference. Since the festival was wifi enabled I was able to post my thoughts of what I was seeing in real time. Twittering is extremely effective in relaying your message (opinion, weblinks or status update) to your friends or to the world wide twitter community. During the recent Mumbai attacks in India Twitter was one of the most used tools to inform people in real time what was happening on the ground during the attacks. If you have not twittered check it out you might like it more then Facebook! [Read]

After many years of “no access” to some of the best programming on TV, HBO is finally coming to Canada under the guise of HBO Canada.  It will be free for all subscribers of the The Movie Network or Movie Central. Unfortunately, you will not be able to get the stand alone channel unless you subscribe to the above services. The question is whether it will be broadcast in HD or not?  We will find out on October 30th which is the scheduled launch for the channel.  Finally, I will be able to see my favourite show “Real Time With Bill Maher” live instead of on a week old podcast. Check out the press release here.

Okay, lately I have been railing against Robbers (Rogers) Cable to my friends and recently returned my 8300HD PVR while cutting my cable cord all together.  I have been dabbling in OTA (Over the Air) indoor antennas only to opt for a Channel Master 4228 (outdoor antenna) which will be installed on my roof tomorrow.  I will be posting the results and my OTA experiments soon.  Long story short I am not missing much from Rogers Cable except my fill of news programming.  I am a bit of a news junkie.  It was great to discover today that Livestation a free program that enables live tv streaming of CNN, Al Jazeera English, BBC World News and others has finally released a Mac player.  You can also add your own web stream or choose one that another viewer has added.  It is definitely not High Definition quality but it is watchable and a great new addition to my cable free home theatre environment.  You can download it here.  What are your thoughts about Livestation?  Post your them in the comments section.

Rumors are flying everywhere.  First its the Nikon rumors and now its Canon’s turn.

Look at the 50D people!

Here is a summary of the specs:

1.6x crop
15.1MP
Digic 4
Dust Reduction
Auto Brightness Processing
Auto CA correction
95% viewfinder .97 magnification
9 point af (All Cross Type)
AF Fine Tuning
Face Recognition AF
ISO 100-3200 (Expansion to 6400, 12800)
6.3 fps (high speed) 3fps (low speed)
Buffer: 16 RAW – 60 JPG – 10 RAW+JPG
100,000 shutter life
HDMI Output
3″ VGA LCD (920,000 pixel)

and supposedly IS will be built into the body.  WOW.

VIA: Engadget

I’m really hoping the latest Nikon rumor is true.  Supposedly Nikon is holding a press conference next week Wednesday on August 27th to announce the release of the D90.  Imagine D300 features crammed into a D80 body.  D90 SKUs have been popping up on Circuit City and Best Buy inventory systems for the past 3 weeks but nothing has been official yet.  Expect it to cost $1299 USD bundled with a new 18-105mm VR lens.

Via: Nikon Rumors

Well the rumour has been around since 2005 and it looks like it may actually happen.  With a special event to be slated in September for new iPod Touches many sources are claiming that Mr. Jobs will also announce a yearly subscription package for half of the iTunes store, there by, renting the songs but not owning them. Details are slim but the price that is being thrown around is $129.00 a year.  In the US there will also be an option for a mobileme/iTunes package at $199.00 a year which will use mobileme as a gateway to be constantly connected to your music.  I personally have never been of a fan of yearly subscriptions to access music but apparently there are enough people who are to make Apple go this route.  Then again, it is only a rumour.

[Read]

Rogers finally released the highly anticipated BlackBerry 9000 a.k.a Bold today.  So obviously as the device trickles out the gate, reviews are popping up all over the place.

Mobilecomputermag has just published an indepth review of RIM’s shiniest new smartphone.  The review features a ton of very nice screen shots of the Bold in action including a video of the Bold’s web browser getting smoked by mobile Safari on an iphone 2G.  LOL.  All joking aside the Bold looks to be the best BlackBerry ever! (aside from browser performance).

Browser performance over WiFi

(Bold looks sluggish next to an iPhone)

(update - another video that shows slightly better browser performance – Blackberry users strike back)

The University of Toronto and IBM are teaming up to build Canada’s fastest supercomputer which will perform 360 trillion calculations per second. One built it will be used for a number of research projects including climate change prediction and aerospace. They are aiming to have the main computin systems operational by next summer 2009. Check out the full story at cbc.ca.