XBMC Cross Platform Media Center goes Beta 1
One Media Center to rule them all and in a dark template bind them! Ah yes, that only took several hours. XBMC Atlantis is launching their first beta of their spiffy looking cross platform media center that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and the Original Xbox (for some reason). Here’s a little excerpt about what this beast is capable of:
Superb format and codec support
XBMC supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box, and include features such as playlist playback, audio visualizations, picture viewing, slideshows, and weather forecast functions, RSS feed scroller on your home screen, together with a ever expanding array of community driven third-party addons and plugins.
Endless playback capabilities for all typles of media
XBMC can play most audio and video file formats as well as display images at resolutions up to 1080p and over from virtually any source, including your local harddrive, CD/DVDs, USB flash drives, the Internet, and network shares, upscaling any lower resolutions videos to the maximum of your displays capability. XBMC can also playback DVD-Video movies with menus from ISO/IMG-images on-the-fly, even when they are in an RAR or ZIP archive. For music playback XBMC offers gapless playback, crossfading, cue sheet, replay gain amplification, advanced smart playlists, and chapter support.
Interested? Hop on over to their official website and pick up the beta.
Bill and Jerry take the backseat
So, many of us are now acquainted with the Bill and Jerry ads that seem to take this post-modern approach to advertising whereby they simply don’t even refer to the product they’re supposedly selling. Some people, this bothers. I imagine these are the neat, organized folk who don’t like seeing the black and white movies colourized, damn it! Turner! Well, luckily for you ‘Phase 2’ of Microsoft’s structured rebuttal to the ‘I’m a Mac/I’m a PC’ ads launched yesterday.
The ad is a little more focused, with the word PC actually appearing in the ad. Some more big celeb guns have been pulled out for this showdown and they range from the easily recognizable to the obscure.
Now what this has to do with Bill and Jerry’s Bodacious Journey, I have no idea, but I for one do not appreciate the distraction one bit.
Check out the new clips here.
Developers cracking down on iPhone apps; iPhone cracking goes up
BreakClassic, BreakTouch 3D, Super Pong 2; what do all these games have in common? They’re carbon copies of Breakout, a property own by Atari. What else do they have in common? They’ve all been mailed some pretty strong letter from the big-wigs at the big ‘A’ a la cease and desist. And they’re not the first apps to feel the wrath of those that don’t want to see their properties ripped off. Tris, the veritable clone of Tetris, saw itself removed from the apps list, forever dooming it to the booming industry of apps for jailbroken iPhones. Another copy cat that ousted from the pay-and-play list? PhoneSaber, the iPhone app that turned average Joe’s into geeks, geeks into nerds, and nerds into gloyven-mayvens with the whooshing and cutting of the appendages.
