I just got my first glimpse of Ravenexus's Web Browser on the OSD and it's pretty exciting. The web browser is particularly interesting component for other programs to draw upon and it will really be neat to see it tied in with the Xi Menus, imagine wikipedia populating "more information about" menu items that would link to wiki pages about the movie, tv show, artist or album you were listening to! This one certainly warrants a future of TV video when done. BTW, the above screen capture was done using the Bagster's VNC Server. More to come!

At Neuros, just by virtue of the fact that we have an open device, we encounter so many interesting modifications and enhancements to our device. So I decided to create a little series of videos, where we talk about the technologies, social phenomenon, the trends and the hacks that are shaping television today and in the future. Some of the trends are the obvious ones that we know will come: The future will hold more choice, better time shifting, and access to content on more devices. But the future of television will be much more, and much more interesting than just that. Connecting the open internet to the TV will give us a lot more than a better, faster, cheaper experience. It will connect us in new, previously unimaginable ways.

By now, most of you are aware of the effort to port VLC to the OSD2 but this week's meeting, yielded a special video update from dionoea.

Basic video and audio playback is working, including h.264, so there's progress. It won't be long before all your favorite internet video is available right on your television, so Stay tuned

This week's edition (June 7 '08) of The Economist features a story about open source hardware and talks about Neuros, Chumby, Bug labs and all the usual subjects. A lot of it may not seem new or surprising to the readers of this blog, but between this article and the New York Times article earlier this year, open source hardware is getting a real boost. The Economist is a highly influential magazine, and a detailed introduction to the concept of open source hardware is sure to pique the interest of numerous executives, and it's the cumulative effect of stories like this that allow open companies to get funding, to find partners and customers, so we're delighted to see more of this coverage, in what we hope will become an increasing trend.

Chester Bateman from the Grassroots Learning Project at Oregon State University Just did a podcast interview with me about open and community based innovation. We talked about how open innovation works and our experiences with the community, etc. You can find the mp3 file here

Many of you may remember Turran for his Neuros Kernel Porting Work on the OSD. I am extremely proud to announce that Turran will officially become a full time paid employee of Neuros on June 5!

Turran joins Nerochiaro and CRWeb as volunteer hackers that have turned to the dark side and become paid employees. We hope that the continued recruiting of community members to Neuros will continue to build tighter bonds with the community and grow it to new heights.

Turran, thanks for your enthusiasm and support for Neuros, we are glad to have you aboard.

Now that the VLC port to Neuros Linux has kicked off a weekly meeting has been scheduled at 10:00 AM on Thursday mornings CST (15:00 UTC). You can see the log for today's meeting and we always welcome new participants. Thanks to JP Saman and the other VLC hackers that have offered to participate in this effort. If you are interested in getting involved, make sure you've registered to be notified about the beta release of the hardware

Porting open, patent free codecs to our devices has always been of great interest to neuros and many of our users. As some of you Neuros old timers may recall, we were the first to port the Ogg Vorbis audio codec to a portable HDD audio player. Now it's time, hopefully, to do the same with the Ogg Theora video codec. This project is exciting to me, not just because it will allow us to support another codec, but because will put hackers directly in contact with technical resources and personnel at TI. Marcello Guedes is actually being mentored by a TI engineer, Jason Kridner and supported by TI with equipment, etc. If we can be successful in this project, I believe it will only further open TI's eyes about the potential and effectiveness of community development.

See the evolving theora wiki page for more information.

This is pretty self explanatory, and pretty cool. If you don't know last.fm then click on the link and check it out. It's a really cool social way to experience music based on a personal recommendation system based on people with like tastes. It's hard to fully appreciate until you've experienced it, and as far as I know, the OSD would be the first device outside of the PC to support it, so this could be an opportunity to bring social interactive radio to the couch so to speak.

We have a last.fm project wiki page thanks to Guillaumebel and thanks Anders for mentoring. Make us proud, I know there are many in the Neuros community that are very much hoping the OSD can become a great net audio streaming device.

Standing on the shoulders of Neuros Giant srobertson is another exciting project sponsored from our friends at Google, the nTube! Browser by Fcheslack and mentored by our own crweb

This is a really significant project IMHO, because browsing internet video is a really rich area for Neuros and creating an API that can really open up that world to a set-top box, is right in the sweet spot of what Neuros is focused on. It's great project, and one I personally hope to participate in (primarily by standing around asking idiotic questions that everyone rolls their eyes at- it's my special skill)