So today I read on GigaOM (http://gigaom.com/video/viewsonic-no-boxee-tv/) that Viewsonic has pulled the plug on the Boxee TV they showed off at CES.  I am sure there will be lots of commentary about how this is the beginning of the end for Boxee.  However I disagree.  Boxee will survive without Viewsonic.

The idea of a TV with Boxee built in is cool.  Just like the idea of Plex on a TV (Which LG announced September 2010 - http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/03/plex-and-lg-bring-tv-to-all-your-devices/).  However as with most “all-in-one” products.  I just don’t see that its going to take off.  Sure for the average consumer having a single device is great.  But the average consumer isn’t going to be interested in the power of Boxee.

Anyone who wants a Boxee-like-product is going to buy a dedicated box.  I don’t think many people are going to buy a Viewsonic TV just to get the Boxee software.  Most TV consumers will buy a specific brand of TV (whether it’s Sony, LG, Sharp, etc) or get one in a certain price point (whatever is cheapest).  And if they want a Boxee (or some other media-streamer) – they will pick it based on the features of that device.

“‘Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation… that was forecasted over the last couple years. In addition, consumer spending for Smart TV’s in general has experienced a significant slow down as the economy has slowed. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available.”

They are mostly right.  But I think the real problem is consumers aren’t willing to spend more money for an HDTV that does some extra stuff.  Stuff they probably don’t need.  And if they do want something that streams internet video or Netflix.  Chances are they will use a dedicated box (or one of the countless other Netflix enabled devices out there).

For our household we have “cut the cord”.  We don’t have cable anymore…our Shaw PVR is sitting idle in our TV cabinet while our Boxee Box is used daily.  Primarily with Netflix.  But also the large amount of free (and 100% legal) content available in Canada from the networks themselves.  All available to stream to the Boxee with a few commercials.  Oh and if you happen to use one of those VPN services I am sure you could access all the content from the US too…

The Boxee Box isn’t cheap.  However if you cancel your cable and the up-front cost of the will be paid for in no-time.  If you want to get more info on this great little box – check out http://www.dlink.ca/boxee/ and http://www.boxee.tv.

Purchase it on Amazon – Boxee Box (Canada) or Boxee Box (US).  Note: If you live in the US – the price was dropped to $180 on Amazon.com recently.

For those of you that don’t know – I built/run/maintain/host/update the website for Friendship Community Church.  It’s a WordPress site (because WordPress rocks).  The idea was to make it easy for the staff to maintain it.  Unfortunately – I haven’t had the time to give them good instructions (it keeps getting put on the back-burner).  So for now I do the weekly bulliten updates for the staff.  Doesn’t bother me.

All of the sermons area already being hosted on Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service, part of the Amazon Web Services suite of products) – since it can get expensive to host 1-2GB of sermons.  S3 makes it cheap (actually with the free usage tier – it’s currently costing me about $0.01 a month).

As any good WordPress admin – I’ve installed a performance plugin. In this case, W3 Total Cache.  The site’s been running happily for 6 or 7 months with it enabled.

No complaints on speed or load times.  But as with any person working in IT – I can’t leave well enough alone and I want to play around with new stuff.   So I enabled the CDN (Content Delivery Network) features of W3 Total Cache and set it to use Amazon S3.  Followed their easy instructions and configured the CName on the server.  That meant all of the images/javascript/css files were being served out of Amazon S3.

I decided that wasn’t geeky enough – I figured go broke or go home.  And by broke I mean – I can afford another $0.02 or $0.03 a month.  So I set up and enabled Amazon CloudFront.

For anyone wondering – Amazon CloudFront (or any CDN for that matter) – works by taking your files and storing them in “edge” locations around the globe.  When a user requests the file – the CDN will find the closest geographical source of the file for the user and send it to them  So if they are from Europe, it will get served from a European edge location.  Otherwise the European visitor will have to request the file from a North American server.

The actual benefit for the Friendship Community Church site is pretty minimal.  Let’s be honest, most of the visitors are going to be coming from the Saanich Peninsula. However there is an Amazon CloudFront edge server located in Seattle, WA.  Which is much closer then the S3 bucket on the East Cost of the US or the data-center for the website hosting in California.

But it’s geeky.  And being an Amazon/AbeBooks employee I like to use our own products (no – I don’t get them for free or even discounted).   I’d run the entire WordPress site in the Amazon Cloud – but the cost is a little too much for me.

I’ve basically let this blog die over the last 8 months.  I could say it’s because of Riley and not having time with the new baby around – but thats not the reason.  I’ve just not had much to say (or more specifically – that I thought others would want to read).

I am going to overhaul the site design soon – and start posting more.  So stay tuned for some changes to the site.  And in the meantime I will start posting more updates.

So the renovation is behind us (I wish I could say the unpacking was as well…) – but we are moving on and getting ready for our new addition to the family.  Sometime on (or around) Sepetember 25th we will welcome our baby into the world.

We are very excited for his/her arrival.

Nellie really wanted to get some photos taken of her “baby bump”.  And luckily for us we know a fantastic photographer – Alan Smith (http://www.ralansmith.com) – who wanted to try his hand at maternity photos.

This is the result!

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Today was a day of cleaning – and some painting.  Aaron’s girlfriend Carolyn came over this afternoon to clean up.  She has a house cleaning business, and also does some work cleaning up after Aaron’s job sites.  While she was busy cleaning and mopping all of the floors and cleaning the baseboard, Nellie and I kept busy cleaning up other areas of the house as well.

We put the kitchen back together now that Rich has painted it.  I also moved the TV and computers out of the bedroom and into the family room.  We decided the 2 couches was a little much so we moved one of them to the front living room for now.

The bedroom is slowly going back to normal.  No more TV and no more humming computers.

Rich was here this evening touching up a few places, and painting part of the wall in our bedroom.

At this point – I am probably going to have to start labeling these posts something else as the “renovation” part is just about over.  We have a small list of finishing things for Aaron to take care of next week – and the bin will be leaving soon.  But next will be the house-reassembly as we start moving our furniture back in and get rooms set up.  Probably less updates as I doubt we’ll be moving stuff every day.  We’ll see.

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