14 DAY TRIAL // Boxee is mostly known for its struggle with online video provider Hulu but once you put that aside the company actually provides a very good product appreciated by a large number of users. And while online video has always been the focus, the latest version, along with the regular bug fixes and feature updates, comes with an updated site dashboard bringing a bunch of new social features and allowing users to find and follow friends across a multitude of services.
“We spent the last few weeks fixing bugs on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and Apple TV. We had some stability issues related to the Boxee Browser and audio-playback, which caused quite a few crashes. We also put some more work into our website, so if you login you’ll see a whole new dashboard (make sure to try out the find friends feature to see who of your contacts is already using Boxee),” Avner Ronen wrote on the Boxee blog.
The new friend finder feature supports a number of social networks and other services like Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Windows Live and FriendFeed, which integrate with the site's dashboard. This allows users to find their friends that may also be using Boxee and then follow their entertainment behavior.
While automatic friend finders aren't anything new and many services now offer similar functionality, few could prove as useful as Boxee. We always put more trust in our friends' opinions and tastes so being able to see what they are watching and enjoying could make it a lot easier to find great new content.
Along with the revised dashboard though also come some new features for the new version coming out on all supported platforms. A new geo-filtering system was introduced to automatically prevent the content that can't be viewed in the user's country from being listed – Hulu for example is only available in the US. An adult content filter was also introduced, which is pretty much self-explanatory, while the rest of the changes were mostly bug fixes.