Official XBMC Remote for Android
XBMC has a official remote app for Android. It’s not completely finished yet but it’s in the Android Market for you to try out. You need at least Android 1.5 and XBMC 9.11. They have a screenshot gallery for you to check out. It looks really good especially since they say they aren’t finished yet.
Google Announced App Inventor for Android
Google announced a new product called App Inventor which will make it easy for anyone to make Android applications. It’s a Google Labs product and isn’t ready just yet for the public. You can sign up now and they will notify you when it’s available.
I’m thinking this could be a really good thing for the Android market. It makes it so anyone can make a simple or complex app. While some might see a problem with this as you aren’t really learning how to program, I see it as a open front door into app development. If you start a app in App Inventor it’s possible that you will want to add more advance feature that requires you to start playing with programming. Then it could turn into that person being a full on programmer. At least I see it that way.
4K Video Comes to YouTube
YouTube now supports 4K resolution which is 4096 x 2304 pixels. That’s more than 4 times the resolution of 1080p. While it’s cool that YouTube is doing this I’m not sure what the point is at this point in time. Not very many people have access to a screen or projector that can output that. And my Internet connection at home took forever to buffer when I switched to the original format. It’s still nice to see that YouTube is thinking ahead. You can check out the videos on the 4K resolution playlist.
Video: BlackBerry OS 6
BlackBerry released another OS 6 video which I have embedded below. OS 6 definitely looks like they are working on a better touch friendly interface. I remember when I had the original Storm and how painful the touch interface was at times. While it does look a lot better I’m not sure it has anything on the iOS or Android.
Video: Control4 OS 2.0
Control4 got an OS update to 2.0. It features a new flash UI that looks pretty good. It has tools for developers, support for new products and an app store. You can check out the video demo below.
Ceton’s 4 Tuner CableCard in Production
Timothy at UsingWindowsHomeServer got a email that Ceton’s new 4 tuner CableCard has started production. The good news is that the product will probably still make it to market. It’s just been delayed for awhile. A lot of Windows Media Center fans are waiting but their patience is running out, especially if another card makes it to market first. It’s kind of funny that they mention the iPhone and iPad in the email. I’m thinking that Ceton and their CableCard aren’t on the same level.
