Boxee and Hulu (and me!)
I was reading the Boxee wiki about the user-made pitch to Hulu to bring it back to Boxee and I thought I'd share something about my experience with Hulu and Boxee:
I've been a fan of Hulu since I got my beta invite back whenever--I honestly don't remember and apparently my GMail doesn't either--and I liked it. I really did. I used the service (despite some Flash issues I had after upgrading to Flash 10) and when they gave us the queueing system, my life because so simple.
Now, you must know that until Hulu, I was getting the awesome Thursday night line-up (The Office, My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock, and Scrubs--when it was on NBC) by.... some shady means and really, it worked for me. Then, there was Hulu. It made watching TV so easy. I mean, the reason I was using said shady means to get my TV was because I wasn't around on Thursday nights or I just plain forgot to watch TV--believe me, I am no good at keeping a TV schedule. Then Hulu came and saved the day. I no long had to do... shady things... to get my TV shows and my life was simple again. Of course, the Flash was killing my computer at times, but it all worked out.
Then, there was Boxee. Now, I had used and kind of liked the Xbox Media Center for the Mac when it came out, but I really saw no use when I simply had VLC and such to watch media that was on my computer but when I first got wind of Boxee... my head nearly burst with excitement. To put Hulu, my iTunes library, and a few other streaming sites all into one cool looking application... that was simply awesome. Mainly because of Hulu. (note: my memory is slipping, but I think there was a time that Hulu wasn't available on Boxee and I wasn't a monster fan of the service, but that may be my confusion with XBMC...) As I used Boxee more and more I watched it grow and become more and more unbelievable as it began to integrate Netflix and ABC and Joost all into itself--because really, I effing hated using the streaming on all three of those sites because they seriously suck so much--and I was happy that, if I wanted to, I could watch video from any of those services. But when it came down to it, I used Hulu on Boxee. Hulu had everything I wanted: The Office, My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock, Testees, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and, the show that REALLY got me into Hulu: Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. All in one site. All through Boxee.
Now, you may say to me, "Mike,, why didn't you just use Hulu's website? What does Boxee have to do with this?" The fact is, as smart and awesome as Hulu's website is, it kills my browser. Every time. Flash here and there and over there and in the corner and all over. It destroys my computer's CPU every time. Whether I use Firefox, Safari or Opera, it always kills my computer. Not to say I can't use the site, but it just make life a bit more of a hassle. With Boxee, navigation was simple. Everything loaded smoothly and everything worked (more or less) perfectly. Hell, I could even use my Apple Remote--which kicks ass.
And now... Hulu is gone. My only use for Boxee now is to watch shady-gained media and maybe stream something random from Netflix or ABC--oh yeah, Scrubs! I'm back to using Hulu's site for streaming and I am back to dealing with frustrating and random crashes because of all of the flash as well as the clunkyness of a website--I just hate all the navigation to watch one episode of a TV show that isn't in my queue.
All in all, this just plain sucks. I'm not really clear as to why Hulu pulled their service from Boxee or why they even would think that Boxee was bad for them, but this just sucks for me and I'm pretty damn sure I'm not the only one. I mean, I was watching the advertisements, I didn't even mind them. Not one bit, but it's still gone so it's BS if Hulu--or the people providing their content--say it's a money issue.
What I'm trying to say is that Hulu needs to come back to Boxee. Done and done.
Radon–a super fast browser (quickie review)
Got word on a new browser from someone on twitter... I don't follow them, but Dallas does and I happened to glance at her computer as she was on Twitter and saw he/she mentioned it... so sorry for not giving credit...
Nevertheless, Radon is a Mac-only browser from Tominated Software and let me tell you: it's pretty cool.
I'm using the browser now and it's pretty sweet. Everything I need loads: GMail (HTML view only :( ), Google Reader, Google Calendar (talk about amazing), Demonoid, IMDB, Wikipedia, Google. But the real awesome part of this browser is that it's über fast. SUPER fast. Awesome fast. I'm talking faster than any browser you put it against. And really, it loads images quickly, Javascript and everything your average user would need.
Except Flash.
There is no flash support in this browser at all. And for me, that's a small problem. I read sites like io9, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, TUAW and all sorts of other blogs/news sites and what sucks is that a lot of the time, these sites feature a video on YouTube or Vimeo or some other flash-video site and, what do you know, it doesn't load in this browser. Let me also mention, there is no tab support (a kind of must for me, but I can deal), no password manager, no ability to upload(like in a form) /or ownload files via HTTP (I'll explain in a second) and no bookmarks.. at all. It's pretty damn basic, but all for the speed.
But that aside, Radon owns kicks ass. Like, I seriously dig it. I'll probably be using it a lot in the future and I'm glad I found out about it. I can live without Flash and if I absolutely NEED it I can pop open Firefox/Safari and hit whatever video I need.
As I said, there is no HTTP downloader, BUT you can still download files. There is an extra add-on built in called Krypton that lets you download files if you hit the file (which will look like jarbled junk) you can download by using Krypton and things will simply download OR you can provide a url and Krypton will download it. Annoying? yes, but it's all for the speed (and it's an independent browser)
Also, there is an add-on built in called Techtanium that creates a mini browser window and, for some reason, searches JUST YouTube... but you can't watch the video... I couldn't really figure out the use for this. I'll make sure to blog again in the future if I figure things out. It could be for future improvements(?).
For now, I'll be using Radon exclusively until I run into some unforseen problem. And really going from Radon to Firefox, you can see how heavy of a browser Firefox really is... Also, I'll wait for the official Firefox 3 and see what's what.
Back to Firefox
So, as I said a while ago, I had switched over to Camino until Firefox 3 came out... I lied.
I managed to stick with Camino 100% for about 2 days before I started using Safari and Firefox. Why? Because I couldn't stand the change. As sad as that is, I wanted my plugins to do my job and to simply function more efficiently on the web--this doesn't mean I need the Firefox plugins, but they made not-working more efficient.
Really, in the end it comes down to dealing with the SEVERE sluggishness of Firefox out of sheer habit. Sure, if I took Firefox off of my computer and forced myself to deal with Camino/Safari/Opera I could easily do that. Hell, before I even discovered Firefox, I was using Opera hardcore (I'm talking version 8) over IE on my old Windows tower (circa 2004-2005).
Just wanted to keep you kiddies updated.
3 advantages and disadvantages of Camino
As of yesterday (12/12/07) I have decided to switch over to Camino (I'm writing from it right now!) from the ever-so-wonderful-but-not-so-Mac-or-Leopard-ready Mozilla Firefox. Mind you, I have only been using Camino for a little over a day, but I used to use it back in Tiger about 8 months ago and boy have there been improvements. Yet, even with the improvements there are some disadvantages to using Camino over Firefox, and so I give you:
Mike Rapin's Official 3 Disadvantages and 3 Advantages of Camino
in comparison to Firefox
Advantages
1. Super fast; Camino,for the most part, runs blazing fast. Compared to Firefox this thing runs at mach 3, especially when opening and closing. Pages load about the same speed (except for the login page for my university, which loads terribly slow in Firefox)
2. Sleek interface; The look of Camino is simple and elegant. Things aren't too cluttered, yet I manage to have ALL of my bookmarks showing, which leads me to...
3. Amazing bookmark bar; Camino's awesome bookmark bar allows multiple lines of bookmarks whereas Firefox only allows for 1 line. This is awesome simply because now I don't need to use folders and I can have all of my bookmarks available WITH their favicons showing--a feature the Mac version of Camino doesn't have without an add-on.
Disadvantages:
1. No undo-close tab; for me, this feature, added in Firefox 2, is a HUGE deal. I am constantly opening and closing tabs for work and when simply browsing and having the ability to undo a closed tab makes life easy for me, especially when I accidentally close a tab.
2. No add ons; Surprisingly, I can live without add-ons (in Firefox), but the luxury of add-ons (such as the 4chan tool, Web Developer Bar, Better Gmail 2, and Google Sync) made life much easier at times, but also slowed down the browser at the same time. I like being able to customize my browser, but at the same time, I really don't NEED all of those add-ons. Besides, if I wanted AMAZING customization, I'd switch to Opera.
3. No re-arranging tabs; I don't know why, but being able to re-arrange my tabs is a big deal for me. Hell, tabbed browsing is a big deal for me, but when I'm working, I like to have similar tabs next to each others and Camino does not allow moving of tabs, which really kind of irks me. I can live without it, I just may have to plan my tabbing (hehe). Let's just hope the guys at Camino are planning on adding this feature. I mean, Safari, Opera, Firefox and even IE has rearrangeable tabs!
