Boxee is a media center application for Mac, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows that's based on the open source XBMC project. The Mac and Ubuntu versions of the media suite have been available to private alpha testers for a while now, and over 200,000 people have signed up so far. Last week the Boxee team removed the private label and opened the alpha up to all Mac, Ubuntu and AppleTV users who want to use the software.

They also launched a private alpha of a Windows version of Boxee.

Boxee for Windows looks and feels a lot like the Ubuntu version I tried a while back. The software provides a full screen interface for browsing photos, video, and music stored on your PC or for accessing online media from sites like Last.fm, Hulu, YouTube, and Shoutcast. The developers also recently added support for Joost and the BBC iPlayer, but this feature only works for users in the UK due to the BBC's IP limitations (it's worth noting that Hulu and other US-based services may not work for users outside of the US unless you use a proxy server).

One of the best things about the way Boxee handles online video is that every movie opens in full screen mode. You can tell that the developers have designed this application to use a full screen interface that will look as good on your HDTV as your laptop. The font size is a bit small for standard definition television sets, but Boxee menus and dialogs are a bit easier to read than the text areas in Zviewer, which is clearly not designed for standard definition TVs.

Mozilla has released an update to Snowl, a plugin first released in August, which allows you to track RSS feeds and Twitter updates in your browser without navigating away from the web page you're currently reading.

Version 0.2 includes an updated river view that groups messages together in a single column, and a new stream view that lets you see messages in your sidebar. To be honest, the stream view looks pretty much like sidebar you get from other Twitter Firefox addons lke Twitbin, TwitKit, or TwitterFox. But most of those plugins let you see detailed information about your Twitter messages, like which ones are replies or direct messages. Snowl doesn't.

Still, as you could probably guess from the low version number, Snowl 0.2 is still a work in pogress. And it does have a few nice features, like the ability to send and receive Tweets from multiple Twitter accounts.

Hot off the initial development releases of Chrome 2.0, Google is now work at producing versions for Mac and Linux something before the middle of this year.

If you're interested, you can follow Google's Mac build instructions and see how the project is taking shape. You'll also need XCode 3.1 and gclient. More detailed notes on the Mac project area available on the following Chromium Dev page.

While the news is bound to make many Mac users happy, many commenters aren't happy with the announcement that Chrome won't run on OS X 10.4 and that PowerPC support is not planned, at least for now.

The Linux port appears to have taken a back seat - the project page hasn't been updated since November 18, 2008. Linux build instructions were, however, updated last week though page clearly states that there is "no working Chromium based browser on Linux."

[via c|net]

When AlertThingy launched in April of 2008, the Adobe AIR-based application was a desktop client for social networking/micro-blogging service FriendFeed. The developers eventually added support for Twitter, which started an arms race between AlertThingy and Twhirl, a Twitter client that added support for FriendFeed.

Now AlertThingy has been updated to version two, and it supports the following services:

• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Jaiku
• TinyURL
• Tumblr
• Twitter

You can use AlertThingy 2 to upload images to Flickr, update your status on Twitter or Facebook, post messags to Tumblr, and so on. And of course, you can see what your friends on each of those services is up to. Users can also subscribe to RSS feeds to receive updates from blogs and news web sites.

If you prefer the classic version of AlertThingy that works with just FriendFeed, AlertThingy v1 is still available for download as well.

[via RefreshingApps]

Openfire is an open-source Jabber (XMPP) server that provides an easy way to offer and maintain internal instant messaging (including voice and video chat) for your company or organization. There are server plugins available which can add archiving and statistics capabilities as well as message of the day and multi-user chat (MUC) bookmarks.

Openfire conveniently supports LDAP and Active Directory authentication as well as SSL for encrypting communications. If you require high availability, you can enable clustering to eliminate a single point of failure. Common databases like MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and PostgreSQL are supported, or you can use Openfire's embedded database.

While the developers offer a web-based (SparkWeb) client and install-based (Spark) client, it's possible to use any IM client that supports Jabber (Adium, Pidgin, iChat, etc.). Openfire runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows and since it's Java based, it will require that you have a JRE installed.

First Adobe released its first alpha of a 64-bit Flash plugin for Linux, and now Sun has stepped up - providing a 64-bit Java plugin. This time, however, Windows users haven't been left out in the cold.

Java SE 6 update 12 is now available through Sun's Early Access Program, and there are downloads for both Linux and Windows platforms. It's been a long time coming (as you can see in the screenshot), and the release is another welcome piece of news for users of 64-bit operating systems.

Interestingly enough, Sun's own Solaris OS won't be running the plugin until a 64-bit version of Firefox is available.

If you're still using a 32-bit browser as well, you'll still need the 32-bit version of the plugin installed.

[ via Phoronix ]

Everybody loves a good "I'm a Mac" ad spoof, right? I mean sure, the meme is well over a year old on YouTube, and even Microsoft has fired back with an "I'm a PC" campaign. Now the Linux Foundation wants in on the action.

The group is asking people to submit video ads that run 60 seconds or less, with the theme "I'm Linux." Ads don't have to directly take on Apple and Microsoft's iconic ad campaigns. But somehow I get the feeling that many of them will.

The winner will get a free trip for one to Narita, Japan for the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in March. There's no guarantee anyone who's not already a Linux enthusiast will ever see your ads.

Over the years, we've seen a lot of memorable ads for Linux, some created on a shoestring budget by amateurs, others published by big name companies like IBM and Novell. You can check out a few of our favorites after the break.

[via Gizmodo]

Now that Adobe AIR is officially available for Linux, you can run plenty of popular desktop clients for Twitter in Linux. Twhirl, Alert Thingy, and TweetDeck all run on Adobe AIR. But if you're looking for a native Linux application that can handle Twitter status updates and much more, there's Gwibber.

Like Twhirl and other desktop Twitter apps, Gwibber will show you a list of the most recent updates from your contacts and let you respond with short messages. In addition to Twitter, Gwibber supports updates from Digg, Jaiku, Facebook, Flickr, Indenti.ca and the now defunct Pownce.

One thing that's a bit confusing is that Gwibber doesn't provide a clear way to tell which messages are coming from which services. For instance, I added my Twitter and Flickr accounts to Gwibber and the only way I could tell that some of the updates were from Flickr was because they were accompanied by thumbnail photos. Update: You can adjust the colors for each account in the preferences.

Gwibber packages are available for Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora.

[via MakeUseOf]

LittleShoot is a new peer to peer application from the makers of LimeWire. But unlike LimeWire and most other P2P file sharing applications, LittleShoot is browser-based. You can search for audio or video files, images, documents, or applications in your browser. And using the built in media player, you can even stream audio and video from the LittleShoot application without waiting for downloads to complete.

You do need to install a 22MB browser plugin, and LittleShoot does eat a fair amount of RAM (over 100MB during my testing). But there are a few advantages to a browser based P2P application. First, you can search LimeWire, LittleShoot, and other sources including YouTube Flickr from a single search box. And second, if you have a web browser open most of the time anyway, it's nice to be able to search for files without launching a separate application.

Because LittleShoot uses peer to peer technology, files are downloaded from multiple computers at once. And the service tries to optimize your download speed by prioritizing sources that are geographically closest to you and sources that are using the same ISP as you.

You can also "publish" files on your desktop to the Little Shoot network with just a few clicks. Just select any files on your computer that you want to share and other users will be able to start streaming or downloading them right from your computer. Once a few other users have the files on their computers they'll share the burden of serving the files to other users who want to download them.

[via Mashable]

VirtualBox is an open source virtualization application that lets you run one operating system inside another. For free. Say, for example you want to check out a new Linux distribution but you don't want to go through the trouble of rebooting your computer. Simple. Just download the disc image for Ubuntu, Fedora, or whatever OS you want to try out, fire up VirtualBox and run create a virtual machine that will let you run the disc image in a window on your desktop.

VirtualBox 2.1 was released last week, and it adds a bunch of new features, including:

• Ability to load 64-bit guest operating systems on host machines running 32-bit operating systems
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL on 32-bit Windows guest systems
• Easier setup for networking on Windows and Linux host systems

You can find a complete list of new features and bug fixes in the changelog. VirtualBox 2.1 is available as a free download for Windows, OS X, Linux, and OpenSolaris.

[via Tombuntu]

The Linux version of Adobe AIR, which has lagged behind its Windows and Mac cousins for a while now, has finally graduated from beta status. That means you can download Adobe AIR for Linux from the same Adobe AIR homepage as the Windows and Mac versions. No more Adobe Labs.

Adobe AIR, by the way, is a platform for running certain web applications as if they were desktop apps, no browser required. A few popular AIR apps are Twhirl, a desktop Twitter and micro-blogging client, and ReadAIR, a desktop client for Google Reader.

Adobe officially supports Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora Linux distributions, although the software may work with other distros.

Installation can be a bit tricky. You can't just click on the installer file in most cases. Rather, you need to open a terminal window, locate the installer, and type "sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin." If that doesn't do the trick, try typing "sudo chmod 755 AdobeAIRInstaller.bin" first.

[via CNET]

Open source music player Amarok 2 was released this week. The latest version of the popular KDE-based application features a completely retooled user interface, integration with online services like Shoutcast, Magnatune, and Jamendo, and support for the KDE 4 desktop environment.

That last bit is important, because if you try to install Amarok 2 on a system running KDE 3.5 you'll probably need to download a whole slew of other updates in order to get the music player working.

There are Windows and OS X ports of Amarok, but right now online Linux distributions (including Kubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian, and PCLinuxOS) are officially supported.

[via Ubuntu Unleashed]

If you're not familiar with it, the HeliOS project is an effort to get computers into the hands of kids who might not otherwise be able to afford them. To date this year, they've distributed over 300 machines. Apparently that's not enough to keep them from making an enemy.

A middle school teacher named Karen observed one of her students demonstrating the abilities of his Linux-powered laptop to his classmates. What a great thing, a student exposing his peers to technology they probably weren't familiar with before....Right?

Wrong. Karen sprang into action, confiscated the CDs the student had brought to share, and unleashed the Spanish Inquisition.

Who is the charlatan who convinced this poor, misguided student that "free software" is something that actually exists?

Who could be so evil as to distribute non-Microsoft software to children? How can that person expect our children to survive in an MS-powered world? Once she had her answer, she sent Ken an email.

In her own words:

At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline.

More than half a year since the folks at Mozilla Messaging released the first alpha version of Thunderbird, the team has released Thunderbird 3 Beta 1. The latest release features a bunch of bug fixes and some new features, including:

• A tabbed interface for mail
• Integration with Windows Vista Search
• Integration with the Mac OS X Address Book
• IMAP improvements for faster message viewing

You can also use the Add-ons Manager to search for, download, and install plugins and themes much the same way you can with the Firefox 3 Add-ons manager. You can find more improvements in the release notes.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The latest version of open source word processor AbiWord adds support for Office Open XML filters, which means you can now use AbiWord to open, edit, or save OpenOffice Writer or Microsoft Word 2007 documents.

AbiWord 2.6.5 also includes a number of bug fixes and an improved LaTeX export filter. AbiWord is available for Windows or Linux. And if you don't want to install it to your PC, a portable version which you can run from a USB flash drive is also available.

I've been using AbiWord for most of my word processing needs for ages. It's quite capable as a light weight standalone word processor. But in the past it has had problems dealing with the formatting of some imported Office documents, which is why I've always kept OpenOffice.org around as a backup. It'll be interesting to see if the new version does a better job with Office docs.