www.eaglekeeper.net

As my list of technology passions or addictions if you will continues to grow so grows my interest in developing an app that I can call mine.  I am not a formally trained software person but have for years been able to make my way through reverse engineering what others have built in order to learn how certain things are done.

The beauty of pursuing building apps for the Android operating system is that Google encourages it and provides an wonderful

Image via CrunchBase

Now that I have put this out there for all the world to see I better start working a little harder on development.  I will share my progress along the way and will undoubted be quite giddy when I successfully make my first “hello world” app and it works.

Image by William Hook via Flickr

Sometime ago I purchased a first generation Apple TV as a media extender or as I have read on the net “the ultimate media extender”.  I was pleased with it.  Not really overwhelmed.  Things got a little better when I ran a jailbreak script on it.  It was still only about 90% to where I really wanted to be.  One of the major hang-ups for me was the constant updates and then having to re-run the jailbreak.  It was getting annoying.

After doing some research I decided to buy a Boxee Box.  I almost went with a Roku but after helping someone set-up one I decided that it was not the option I was looking for.  I downloaded the Boxee software to my laptop to try it out and see what I thought about it.  The GUI did take some getting used to but after a couple of months I think that I am relatively comfortable with it.

After a quick and quite easy set-up I was ready to go.  Get some apps up and running.  I need to have my MLB.TV and NHL Gamecenter.  That went smooth enough.  Next up, mapping it to my media server.  Again, not very difficult.  To my surprise after all the media folders were mapped it took a while to actually go back and navigate these folders.  I was a littled concerned.  Well, after some time I was able to navigate the folders.  Behold, it went out and got all the album and DVD cover data on it’s own.  That was one heck of nice feature that I was not aware of.

I am still working with a variety of apps beyond my sports related ones.  I have a list that I have been working on getting installed and will report the choices that I have settled on.  For my money this is the best set top box, media extender, or whatever you want to call it, is the best thing out there at this time.