Introducing the Boxee Box

We show you Boxee's device for watching Web-based media on your TV, Vevo gets set to do what MTV should have done ages ago, and Microsoft launches a Wikipedia-like site for the Average Jane or Joe.

Introducing the Boxee Box We’re showing you the Boxee Box Vivo sets to do with MTV should have done ages ago and Microsoft launches a Wikipedia-like site for the Average Joe. It’s Tuesday, December 8th, I’m Natali Del Conte and it’s time to get loaded. Boxee unveiled a new set-top box and the beta version of its software here in New York last night. We trekked all the way up to Brooklyn to see it, take a look. The Boxee Box will cost around $200.00 when it launches next year. It’s supposed to bring the Boxee Software which collaborates online video content to your television. Boxee did say that this box was not their final TV solution. The company hopes to be the primary software for several set-top devices in the near future. I have to say, I find that box to be unsightly, it won’t fit in most people’s home entertainment centers, it’s not very—Boxee’s beta will be opened to the public at the consumer electronic show in Las Vegas in January. Google announced something called real time search on Monday. It’s partly a result of the company’s collaboration with Twitter in a section called Latest Results, Google will give you search results of tweets, Facebook messages and other real time activity around that search term. This is heavily tied to social networking, but it’s more than that, it will also index websites in real time. Google also announced a new feature for mobile devices that lets you scan QR-Codes with your phone to get information about places like restaurants while you’re out and about. QR-Codes are matrix codes that your phone can process like a barcode. When a store or a restaurant post a QR-Code then you scan it with your phone and pull up information, reviews and even coupons from that store. You need an app that reads QR-Codes but they’re available for Blackberry, Android and iPhone for now. To find participating retailers, go to Google.com/favoriteplaces. For major music labels, they’re launching a music video website today. Vivo is a collaboration between Universal, Sony and EMI, they are still trying to get one onboard. Vivo will be sort of like Hulu for music videos although the videos will be hosted by YouTube, the labels do want Vivo to be the main destination site. I think this could be a big hit and I can’t help but wonder why didn’t MTV do these ages ago. Yahoo wants to give you some control over the ads you see. The company announced a tool called Add Interest Manager. It will summarize user’s online activity to see how they’re targeted with certain ads. Yahoo’s ad network is based on a user’s interest and if you didn’t already know that you enjoy say celebrity gossip or kittens, then you can see what interest categories Yahoo places you in. You can turn off categories that you’re choosing and even switch off internet based ads entirely or just ignore them. To see how this works, go to privacy.yahoo.com/aim. Microsoft learned something called EntityCube which is sort of like Wikipedia for everybody. I guess that sort of sounds like Facebook but it’s a public Wiki entry for the average Joe, anybody, your mom, your uncle, whoever. It pulls together biographical information on anyone on the web. This is supposed to be much more useful than just Google stalking someone. You can try it for yourself at Entitycube.research.microsoft.com Twitter has been integrated into city search listings. So, if you’re searching for a specific restaurant, you can see recent tweets about that restaurant, you can even tweet something in reply from within that city search listing if you have an opinion about that place. Sony is making some big changes to its Ebook store. First off, the store will now be called the Reader Store instead of the Ebook store. Also, the store will offer its entire library in ePub format. This is the open DRM format. You can still read non-ePub books on your reader but all books purchased on the Reader Store from here on now will be ePub. The store will also get a software upgrade on December 11th in preparation for the upcoming Sony Reader Daily Edition. Those are all your headlines for today. I will see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching. I’m Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you’ve just been loaded.