Who isn’t a fan of Christopher Columbus? You know, the guy who rediscovered a continent abundant in natural resources and allowed a herd of shady Europeans to start over in the land of opportunity? Granted he only achieved this by getting lost, but still, the guy has some merit.

Wondering where I’m going with this? Well, you too could be the pioneer of unchartered territories by joining Moovida’s beta tester program. Ok, maybe I’m going a little “overboard” with this analogy, but if you’re fan of Moovida and want to be the first to experience new content and features, joining the beta tester program is the best way to go. Get all excitement minus the sea sickness and tuberculosis.

The goal of the program is to get plugins and features to Moovida users faster, so by becoming a beta tester you actually contribute to the greater good of Moovidamankind. It’s easy to join, all you need to do is:

1) create an account with Launchpad

2) sign up to Moovida’s beta tester group on Launchpad

3) subscribe to the group’s mailing list

4) get the instructions by email which explain how to get the beta content and make bug reports (alert! there are mildly geeky concepts involved here so make sure you are familiar with changing values in Moovida’s configuration file)

5) get cracking!

The group is open to anyone, and we’ll be contacting members to test specific topics on an ongoing basis. All we ask from beta testers’ is that they know Moovida well (as in power user) and file complete and easy to reproduce bug reports. If you’re not sure how, get some practice first by trying to find inconsistencies with Moovida’s current version, and file your bug report here. Our QA Team will let you know if there is missing information to confirm the bug.

So what next? Moovida beta testers’ first assignment is to check out the newest Wearehunted plugin, developed by steadfast Moovida community member Michal Sawicz. Don’t hesitate to tell your friends about the program, the more the merrier.

Happy testing!

It was with a slight smirk in the Fluendo offices as the Moovida team looked at the latest 3.0 update to Apple’s ‘Hobby’ project the AppleTV. What caused us to smile was the new changes to their ‘Main Menu’ with Apple declaring that it ”…features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite content” [1]. Haven’t we seen this somewhere before and came to the same conclusion?

It is interesting to see someone like Apple struggle with the complexities of a media center and despite its ‘hobby’ status it stands out as one of the poorest products in their inventory. How do you transport desktop features and methodology to a TV set and offer a simple interface that everyone can understand and find easy to use? Apple is failing at this. Some of the Moovida team has been doing this media center gig for nearly ten years and we feel we have the answers. We have been wrestling with interface ideas and that healthy balance of power versus simplicity as we continually ask ourselves that very question. I feel we are getting it right and on the verge of making it even better.

When Moovida replaced Elisa, we redesigned our Main Menu. The reason for this was to remove clicks, to make the experience as speedy and intuitive as possible and more importantly put a real emphasis on ’simpler and faster’. In fact, at the time I highlighted the AppleTV as a shining example of what NOT to do! (hey, I don’t like everything Apple does!). However, Apple updated their Main Menu and in effect ‘borrowed’ one of the key aspects that make our media center so much more intuitive. Is Apple following in our footsteps? In many ways they are, but in a smug way it is nice to see a ‘competitor’ as big as Apple trailing behind us and yet still not achieving the level of user experience standard we feel Moovida offers (but maybe we’re just full of ourselves?).

Still, the good thing about our project being open source is, we have the chance to move faster and more importantly for us, it isn’t a hobby!

[1] Apple Introduces Apple Tv 3.0 Software With Redesigned User Interface – Eddy Cue VP of Internet Services: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/29appletv.html

Moovida is a great open source Media Center, simple and free to download on Linux or Windows . But what’s even sweeter is when it’s packaged by your open source operating system…

Now Ubuntu and Mandriva users can have the Moovida installed faster that you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (ok maybe this is only true for heavy stutterers) by checking the software center for Ubuntu, or by editing the package manager. Find details on how Moovida is packaged on all other Linux distributions here.

To update Moovida to the latest version, there are automated and transparent updates in the plugin repository, and Ubuntu users can also use the packages in our PPA .
 
Fear not Windows users, we understand that it might sound like Chinese to you, this post is for Linux aficionados

Remember the Moovida-Mandriva dev contest we announced a while back? Well you have two weeks to submit your contributions for the chance to win some sweet prizes. We’ve already received great plugin submissions, but there are still so many possibilities out there we don’t even know where to begin… ok well actually we do, just make sure not to duplicate your efforts with existing Moovida plugins.

So what fruits have the dev contest brought so far? So far Vimeo, Arte and CNN will be available soon. Here’s a sneak peek of what type of content awaits on your Moovida Media Center:

• With Vimeo, you don’t need to search through thousands of crap videos before finding something worth watching. They’ve got gems of all kinds like this 5 second film:

• Arte offers audacious and artsy content in French & German, not to say weird. They also stream great live concerts.

• Dude, if you don’t know CNN, you need this plugin badly. It’s a little something we like to call news. Here’s a prime example of their high standards in reporting:

I’m pumped, are you?

If you’re a music fiend and want to be in the know without having to spend countless hours perusing music blogs and listening to uninspired podcasts, Moovida highly recommends wearehunted.com. It’s become ridiculously hard to stay on top of all the new talent since mySpace emerged, and if your day job’s not music, this site should become your reference point. It combines semantic search with aggregation technology (translation: it stalks music trends from Twitter, Facebook, P2P, etc.), so you don’t have to waste your time on streaming services’ often questionable suggestions.

Wish it were a Moovida Media Center plugin?

Is it because Christmas is around the corner that people have been in the giving mood? We’ve been asked many times how to donate to Moovida. Who knew free software users would be so generous?

As we’re not the type to refuse special requests of this kind (who would?), we’ve put in place a PayPal account to facilitate your eagerness to shower us with cash, so we can spend it on lavish dinners and Champaign filled limo rides. Seriously though, all the money that you donate to Moovida will go towards providing cool contest prizes. This will spur more motivation amongst our community  to create more plugins, a win for all Moovida users.

If you’re not into donating and more into “collaborating” (as our business guys put so articulately), make sure to contact business development.

Moovida hearts community, which is why we’ve revamped our Forum to make it clearer, friendlier and more dynamic.

How so?

• Less Forum categories. Get posting faster,  avoiding the “where the hell am I supposed to post this comment?” moments
• More functionality. The user control panel lets you manage subscriptions, bookmarks and drafts, and gives you access to stats and member listing info
• User post ratings. Rate a post on 5 stars (1=not useful, 5=this member knows their shit) and make it easier for others to find useful posts
• More user profile info at first glance. To the right of each post, you will get more info on the post’s author
  • Ranking (coming soon). Instead of specifying the questionable distinction between ‘New Member’ and ‘Member’, a Jedi rank will be attributed  to that user’s level of contribution (see recognition program below)
  • Posts. Needless to say, someone who has posted 150 times is more likely to be a good Moovida reference vs. a user with 5 posts
  • Joined. With this field you can instantly find out if the post’s author is a newbie or a seasoned member
  • Operating System & Moovida Version: Edit this in your profile so members can answer your questions without asking the same old “I need your specs to help you.”
  • Total user rating: The total nbr. of stars accumulated  paired with the qty of posts that have been rated are useful hints to whether the member generally makes good comments. We are working on the “avg. post rating” field so slower minds don’t have to bother with the math.
• Recognition Program. We’ve decided to attribute Jedi ranks to our superstar posters so users can gage member credibility (coming soon).
  • Every 50 posts = 1 lightsaber
  • 1 lightsaber  = Jedi Apprentice
  • 4 lightsabers = Jedi Knight
  • > 4 lightsabers + good user rating = Jedi Master (can become Forum moderator)

So why Jedi? Ya we know it’s geeky, but it’s something we all thrive to become in one way or another (I’d like to be a Jedi Master at Guitar Hero). Besides, who reading this post has never wanted to own a lightsaber, or has not once imitated playing with one? Speaking of, how would you write the sound a lightsaber makes… bzjiou? Really, I’m curious to know.

This one never gets old:

Love or hate the new Forum? We want to hear what you have to say, including lightsaber stories and videos.

Our growing team is hustling to make Moovida the Media Center of your dreams, but before you start drooling over it, we have to nail essentials like bug fixes and performance enhancements. Most take this for granted, but it takes hundreds hours of strenuous coding work to offer a great user experience, naked to the untrained eye. In this sense, our latest release, Moovida 1.0.8., includes a great number of bug fixes that illustrate this seamless improvement, and we sure hope you enjoy it.

We’re also getting more consistent.  Moovida 1.0.8. is the first of what will be a monthly release schedule. You’ll have to be patient for more features, but as a hint of what’s coming, all we can say for now is UI refresh… and we promise you it will be fresh. Tantalizing enough? It’s the kind of thing that has no substitute than to see with your own eyes, so you’ll have to subscribe to our blog to get a sneak peek.

If ever you spot something not quite right with the new release, make sure to let us know. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help improve Moovida Media Center.