Boxee’s entertainment dashboard is revolutionizing how we consume internet media (some of us even use it on our hacked Apple TVs), but even with the new version released for Windows and the cool new applications, Boxee has been lacking one key feature — the ability to find and follow our friends.

Today, however, Boxee has released an update to their website that includes a friend finder that should truly transform the service into the social entertainment discovery engine that it was destined to become. With the new release, you can now find your existing social network and email contacts on Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Windows Live, and FriendFeed.

To start following your friends already using Boxee (you’ll probably be surprised by the quantity of them) all you need to do is click on the Friends tab and select Find. From there you can grant access to your Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live accounts, or add your login credentials for Twitter and FriendFeed. You’ll then get a comprehensive list of Boxee users that you can easily click to follow.

For most applications, an automatic friend finder is blasé news. For Boxee, a friend finder is incredibly important as it adds the much needed contextual social layer to the app to help us find and discover the entertainment that our friends are enjoying. Boxee is just one of those apps that really comes alive when you can find great content, and being able to follow your friends entertainment behaviors is key to making that happen.

You’ll also notice that Boxee’s web interface has been refreshed to make your online experience much more user-friendly. What was once clunky and difficult to use is now simple and intuitive.

We’re really liking the changes that Boxee’s implementing and hope to see even more innovation in the future. Are you a Boxee user? Let us know what you think about all the recent improvements in the comments.

(Via Mashable!.)

One of the best and most popular 3rd party apps for Twitter is TwitPic, the top service for sharing pictures via Twitter and Twitter apps such as Tweetie. Twitpic and its competitors (most notably Yfrog) have created a new photography-sharing ecosystem that connects friends and shares our best moments visually.

You haven’t experienced Twitter or Twitpics though if you haven’t seem them fly across your screen in realtime. It’s fascinating to see the people, experiences, and tweets that comprise the Twitterverse, and interestingly enough, there are a handful of tools dedicated to doing just that. So prepare for a visual odyssey as we highlight four tools for tracking TwitPics in realtime:

1. Pingwire

We like the fact that Pingwire was created by a sleepless coder in about 40 minutes. The result is a simple but effective website for seeing TwitPics uploaded in real-time. In fact, Pingwire became so popular so quickly that it took down TwitPic, so now it is displaying Yfrog images until the issue is fixed.

2. Twitcaps

Similar in functironality, Twitcaps displays the most recent images on Twitter, though it comes with a few extra options, including the ability to stop auto-refresh, organizing pics by the most popular, viewing both Yfrog and Twitpics at the same time, and finally, being able to see the tweet and user associated with the picture when you hover over any image.

3. Picfog

Picfog brands itself as realtime image search. Searching for Mashable turns up mostly relevant results and displays not only how long ago the image was uploaded, but how many retweets the image has received. A very useful visual stream.

4. Twicsy

Is Twicsy technically realtime? No. Is it very useful for finding the most recent Twitpics based on popularity and search keywords? Yes. You can even login via Oauth and tweet out pics you find.

BONUS: Gimme Shiny!

If you’re looking for more artistic photographs, Gimme Shiny! will absolutely fulfill that craving. It pulls popular images from devianART, Flickr and FFFOUND. I could look at this for hours.

(Via Mashable!.)

There are few things that make handheld video look more polished and professional than the use of a Steadicam. And this homemade version is seriously cheap to put together.

This contraption is actually a gimbal mount, using a skate bearing, three sections of PVC piping, some wood and some nuts and bolts. Compared to a real Steadicam, which can set you back $25,000 and up, this is a pretty great setup. Just look at the video he shot with it below!

(Via Gizmodo.)

TwitVid’s a free app that tweets videos you shoot with your iPhone 3GS. And that’s pretty much the long and the short of it. (Mostly short.) [TwitVid, iTunes]

(Via Gizmodo.)

While the shuttle Endeavour is having a tough time getting off of the launch pad, the Apollo 11 moon mission should proceed as scheduled later this week. Some 40 years after Neil Armstrong and a host of behind-the-scenes workers at NASA made JFK’s vision a reality, WeChooseTheMoon.org is being launched to recreate the whole spectacle. Starting a full 90 minutes prior to the 40th anniversary (that’s 8:02AM on July 16th), the site will be fully operational, tracking the capsule’s route from Earth to the moon. Reportedly, visitors will be able to peek ‘animated recreations of key events from the four-day mission, including when Apollo 11 first orbits the moon and when the lunar module separates from the command module.’ If you’re one of those who remembers ‘exactly where you were on that fateful day,’ you should probably queue up a Google alert and bookmark your browser to relive the whole experience again.

(Via Engadget.)

Yes, “This is Mason” returns to Ustream.tv… In color, shaven head and under house arrest…. Same old Mason, welcome back buddy!

This Is Mason

Guess who past me this afternoon on Highway 80, yep Miley Cyrus shooting a car scene for The Last Song. Thanks again Miley for the traffic hold up!

“The earliest documented performance with an electrically amplified guitar was in 1932,” according to Wikipedia. The electric guitar was used by Hawaiian Style musicians. George Barnes reportedly recorded the first 2 songs with the electric guitar in 1938.

Now, Rock ‘N’ Roll without the electric guitar, is a folk song; slap a banjo on your knee and rock with a toothless hockey player on the harmonica. Howstuffworks calls it the best thing since the incandescent light bulb.

In It Might Get Loud — a documentary on the electric guitar from the point of view of three rock legends, Jack White, the lead vocalist for The White Stripes; The Edge, guitarist for the Irish rock band U2; Jimmy Page, co-founder of the English rock band Led Zeppelin; give accounts of their lives mastering the electric guitar.

Jack White makes a one-string electric guitar from a board, a pick-up and Coke bottle in the film. Jimmy Page wrote a new song for the documentary. And the Edge is featured arranging his song “Get on Your Boots.”