If you lost your menu items like I did, ssh into your apple tv and follow the instructions below

Type:
wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/858897/XBMC/Launcher-3.2.beta3-debug.run

Type:
chmod +x Launcher-3.2.beta3-debug.run

Type :
./Launcher-3.2.beta3-debug.run

Enter the appropriate password “frontrow“  and answer “YES” when it asks to restart the finder.

4) From your AppleTV Menu> Launcher > Downloads, install boxee and or XBMC.

ATTENTION!!!!  Do not select Launcher 3.1

Simple.  If you need to create a patchstick, download atvusb-creator.  Follow the directions on the Google code page.

First off I want to say that the Palm Pre is a huge leap in smartphone tech.  The interface is clean and crisp and the synergy functions of WebOS make it a great phone to organize and update contacts, calendars, notes and tasks across a range of services and social networking sites.  The integration with google is only shadowed by Android obviously.  The services that Sprint offer in their plans arent to shabby either.  The price plans are by far the best bang for your buck in term of what you get.  The fact that you can have navigation, unlimited sms, mms, im and data is awesome.  Even the unlimited everything plan is only 99 bucks compared to Verizon or ATT which would run well over that.  The app store is starting to grow which is another welcomed addition.  Overall the Palm Pre WebOS is what i would classify as a good starting point for Palm to regain some ground but there is more work to do.

I went and purchased a Palm Pre exactly 42 days ago expecting to upgrade my wireless capabilities to a new level and now I am chewing on blood pressure medication like they are tic tacs.  I grabbed the Palm Pre with the expectations of being able to replace a few of my daily gadgets with an all in one device.  My TomTom, iPod, Phone and PDA could all be in one handy little device.  For the most part I acheived my goal except there is that “for the most part” issue.  The Palm Pre is an expensive smartphone at the price of 200 bucks with a 2 year contract on Sprint  and now there are issues with the Pre.

First off, I had no problems for 30 days except the OS lacked some basic functionality that PALM really dropped the ball on.  Things like selecting text for cut, copy and paste is a pain and in calendar event view i can’t scroll to see the entire entry for an event location.  The Blue-tooth capabilities are seriously flawed and don’t work with most blue-tooth car kits or aftermarket devices. Now I am running into hardware issues.  The contact in the 3.5mm headphone jack sticks and disables the audio to the phone’s earpiece making the phone app unusable.  To fix this you have to exercise the headphone jack a few times to unstick the contact.  This is unacceptable for a piece of hardware i spent 200 bucks on. There are other issues that I have read about in other posts such as the slider breaking (mine is getting kinda loose) , screen pixel issues ( 1 is stuck and I’m sure more to follow) and wifi problems that I am sure i will have the privilege of experiencing in the near future.  Those issues are not the worst part though.

Sprint is the 3rd biggest cell provider in the country and their policies and customer service reflect that.  My experience with Sprint customer service is once you bought it and got past the 30 day period YOUR SCREWED!  I am 12 days over my 30 day return period and they are completely unwilling to work with me to resolve the issues.  The Sprint repair center I visited today said they could replace the phone under warranty ONLY if they were to receive a non functioning phone.  Well of course when i got to the store the contact in the 3.5 mm jack became unstuck and the phone worked again so they wouldn’t do anything.  But lets say it didn’t work for them either, they still would only replace it with another Palm Pre that would have had the same known hardware issue.  What am I paying the insurance for if they are gonna give me another phone that has a 99.9% chance of breaking too!  That’s like a Ford recall for exploding gas tanks only to replace it with a gas tank that could EXPLODE!  I can understand not taking a return on a phone that is 2 or 3 months past the return time but 12 days, Really?

Sprint is really on the ball with their plan options and included services but their customer service as the 3rd in the market needs some attention.  My love affair with the Palm Pre was was fiery at the start but is quickly over much like the ability to use the headphone jack for fear it might break my phone.  It was a nice try and a good start to rebuild the Palm name but the bar has been set pretty high by things like the iPhone and the Android OS.  Palm needs to hit those marks before i will buy a Palm device again.  Maybe the HTC Hero can save me?

BOLT  is a web browser developed for mobile users with even the simplest phones.  BOLT provides mobile users with the ability to view PC style web-pages via their mobile device.  Features include streaming content, RSS feed support and 25 to 50 percent faster load times than most mobile browsers.  From Bitstreams website “Built on Bitstream’s ThunderHawk browsing technology, BOLT is the result of 5+ years experience developing mobile browsers that optimize usability, speed and performance on resource-constrained systems with limited memory, processing power and screen space.”  The Beta 2 version is available as a free download.  I have been using this on my Blackberry Curve 8330 for a few weeks now and am very pleased with its performance.

BOLT Browser Website

Flock

Requirements:

• A USB drive of any size.  (I used 1 gig)
• A computer with a BIOS that allows booting from a USB port.
• A Bootable floppy disk or CD. (you can use an old Windows 98 bootable CD or floppy disk for this.
• Any Utility that allows you to create partitions, set active partitions, create a master boot record, and transfer the boot files to the active partition. (I used FORMAT and DOS FDISK that are on the Window 98 CD)

Directions:

Part I:

In your systems BIOS, make the USB drive the first in the drive sequence.

Why?  In this case, fdisk does not allow for a partition to be set as ACTIVE (bootable) unless it is the first drive.  In order for your computer to boot to your OS, your harddrive is set to be the first drive.  This needs to be temporarily changed.

How?  There are three ways to do this.  You only need to do one of the three ways, whichever one works for you.  All of them require that the USB drive be plugged into the PC before you turn the PC on. Also take note of the options you are going to be changing, so when you are done, you can set the system back to the way it was originally.

1. Bios** drive sequence: Depending on your BIOS, there may be a way to change which device the computer looks at first.  If there is, select the USB flash drive as the first in the list.
2. Disable the other drives: In the BIOS, turn your harddrive, to the off or none setting.  Your harddrive might be labeled “Primary Drive 0″  “Auto” or “On” Change it to “off” or “none”
3. Unplugg the hard drive(s): Use this option if your BIOS doesn’t have an option to change the drive sequence or to turn off the hard drive.  Please make sure you know what you are doing here.  If you are not sure exactly how to do this, look it up in google.  Be Aware: Opening your computer case may result in voiding your computer warranty or damaging your hardware.

**  Please note that many BIOSes are different and the wording will vary from one to another.

Part II:

1. Boot the PC from the boot floppy/CD (Windows 98 floppy/CD) into the command prompt with the USB drive plugged in.
2. Once in the command prompt, run fdisk
3. If a primary partition  already exists on the USB Drive, Goto step 4 below.  If it doesn’t or you don’t know, use fdisk to create one.  If for some reason you aren’t able to, make sure that the USB drive is set to be the first in the drive sequence in the BIOS.
4. Use fdisk’s “Set Active Partition” (option 2) to set the primary partition on the USB Drive to Active.
5. Exit fdisk
6. Reboot the PC from the boot floppy/CD (Windows 98 floppy/CD) into the command prompt with the USB flash drive plugged in.
7. At the command prompt enter the following command: dir c: This step is to verify that the C: drive is actually the primary partition on the USB Drive.  Regardless of the result that the command generates, the important thing to note is to make sure that the size of the primary partition on the USB drive is roughly equal to the sum of the empty space and the used space.  Refer to Part I
8. Format and copy the boot files to the primary partition.  At the command prompt, from the directory (on the Windows 98 CD/floppy) where FORMAT.COM is located, enter: format /s c:
9. Run fdisk /mbr This writes the master boot record to the USB drive without altering the partition table information.
10. Restart the PC and choose booting from the USB drive.  If all goes well, you should see a C:> command prompt.
11. Now your flash drive is bootable, however please remember to reset your PC settings back to their original settings.

Last night the folks at Boxee announced the release of a new Boxee alpha.  The top additions to this new alpha are the support for Pandora music streaming, PBS streams, RadioTime, a new API and the video playback is built on the XUL framework.  The XUL framework is the same that Firefox is built on.  Yes, HULU does work.  Good Luck blocking it now.  I just downloaded the alpha release from Boxee.tv and must say it delivers.  Go get it.

http://boxee.tv

Here is a short how to in order to use the new plugins:

Start Boxee and in the left navigation pane scroll down to “Apps Box”.  Along the top of your screen there are four selections, choose the repositories tab and add a new repository.  Type the following in the text field minus the quotes ” dir.boxeehq.com” and select done.  You will now be able to back out and select “New Applications”.  This is where you can add all sorts of new feeds to your Media Player.  Have Fun!