At the event, Boxee announced that they’ll finally be moving out of alpha to beta, starting this September. And they’ve got big changes in store: For one, Windows support.

Boxee’ll have some stiff competition on Windows; anybody who’s used Windows Media Centre knows that it’s one of the best pieces of software Microsoft’s ever made. But Boxee’s support for streaming video, along with new social networking sites, MLB.tv, and embracing of apps (over 120 in total) makes it the media nerd’s 3m software. Unfortunately, Hulu is still off limits, as they refuse to allow Boxee to access it.

There may be even more good stuff in the future: Boxee CEO Avner Ronen hinted that if there’s enough interest, they might create an iPhone app based on Boxee. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for that one. [TechCrunch]

Let’s hope his leak at Apple has an alibi when his Steveness comes knocking. Here was Kevin’s prognosticating:

- Revamp of entire iPod line.
– Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign (see pic).
– iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
– iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
– iTunes 8.0 (”it’s a big update w/new features”).

And on iTunes 8:

iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have.

With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favourite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.

Even the layout mockup, which was coyly what it would look like “if I had to guess”–100% correct:

And of course, the Nano photo above. Not a rendering, an actual product shot of the silver Nano. So besides skipping the ancillary announcements like Nike+ and the new headphones, Rose nailed it.

One other side point: this also shows that Apple has smartly reconsidered the same strategy that issued a spew of take-down notices with every leak that hit the web and eventually forced blogs like Think Secret to shut down. It’s all or nothing with that strategy–as only targeting the information that’s correct is the deadest giveaway possible–and once something hits the web, there’s very little one company can do to stop it. As we’ve seen a bajillion times.

So congrats Kevin–this time (we all know you’ve had your misses, too). Make sure you take your new buddy in Cupertino out for a nice, juicy steak (in Sacramento, with fake mustaches) while the axe hangs. [Kevin Rose]

Knewsroom works like this: Members submit story ideas, which can be as basic as “Apple Introduces 3G iPhone.” Then, people find stories around the web that they like, maybe one from Giz, one from Engadget and another from, let’s say, Ars Technica. Readers vote on the stories they like, but if someone doesn’t like any, they are free to write their own, possibly combining those three sources for a better overall story. (As if.) The final product is a daily Knewspaper that runs only the biggest crowd pleasers, and the Knewsroom writer, if one is selected, gets paid for services rendered.

You may say, “That doesn’t sound like Digg,” and in truth, this once-per-day concept isn’t very Digg-like. But if you belong to the community, you’ll be seeing the popular stories rise and fall day in and day out, just like they do on Digg. Then, people with less time or maybe just better perspective will hit the daily site, to see what the top stories are and then get on with their actual bona fide lives.

The funny thing is, this all came from a guy who wanted to use the collaboration to create gadgets. Ben Kaufman—who at 21 is so much younger than me it’s embarrassing—has already sold one company that was successful at doing just this: it was called Mophie, and now it’s a part of mStation, an exotic iPod accessory product maker.

Ben wanted Kluster to be an expanded Mophie, a place where companies could go to find design inspiration for whatever they were trying to build—iPod docks, sunglasses, board games, you name it. It worked almost like a massive sim game—you bet on various ideas at various stages of development, and if your idea wins, you get a piece of the bounty offered by the client companies. That’s right, you got real money.

The downsides were that the companies who most liked the service wanted it on their own terms, and a site with a broad mission to design anything and everything with a massive, nebulous volunteer workforce was hard to manage. As a result, Kluster pulled down its initial infrastructure, and is in the process of building mini Klusters for companies. It will also launch specific Kluster “labs” for specific product categories. Ben thinks a more focused studio breeds better and faster decisions.

It’s all pretty crazy, and I don’t blame you if it’s hard to follow along. But what’s important is that you go there, because shit, someone’s got to start submitting those Gizmodo stories, and if it’s not you, then who, baby, who? [Knewsroom]

Projector: US$2700.
Projector screen: US$700.
Denon receiver: US$1200.
Series 3 HD TiVO: US$660.
Klipsch right and left floor standing speaker: US$2500 (US$1249 each).
Klipsch subwoofer: US$500.
Klipsch centre speaker: US$450.
Apple TV: US$330.
Professional installation: free

Total: US$9040

It’s not that bad, but come on Kevin, we were expecting a full Enterprise-themed home theatre. What happened to the spend-spend-spend culture of the 90s? Where’s the “dot com” here? Is this part of some kind of some cultivated shabby lifestyle? What’s the deal, man? Put some of that money back into the economy, damnit.

[My HDTV Choice —Thanks Alan]

Kevin also said that Apple has restricted background-running applications because they don’t want competition to iChat from third-party applications made using the SDK. The fact is that, if they wanted to ban any direct competition to their own applications, they will simply not approve them for publication and get done with it, without affecting any other developer.

The truth, however, is much simpler than that: Apple hasn’t hidden the fact that they are setting this limit to guarantee a flawless user experience, so the core functions of the iPhone are never affected by applications stealing CPU cycles in the background. And that’s the whole story, really. Installer.app applications will still be able to run in the background, like many do right now (like Apollo.)

But regarding the video conference, yes, he’s probably right. It’s logical to expect this from Apple. In fact, most probably the 3G iPhone will have videoconferencing with any other 3G-based video-conferencing mobile phone out there, because they use the same h.264 encoding that iChat uses.

In other news, completely drunk sources report that Drew Curtis was heard saying that the next iPhone will be “really shiny.” [Diggnation]

Go Kina! [Kina Grannis]

When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.

But your poor tastes/opinions won’t screw everyone.The system only works within browser…for now…meaning that your opinions will not affect other users. Of course, if such a system were deployed in a widespread fashion, we’re guessing Google would aggregate data trends to alter search results over time for better relevance.

And would such a system be better? What do we trust more, man or machine? Or sweatshops full of children adding “Nike.com” to every query result? [google via theregister]

Product Page [via Red Ferret]

[UPDATE: About two hours after posting the above, Kevin Rose, Digg founder, reposted the HD-DVD key himself, in response to the massive negative reaction to pulling the original story. A snip of Kevin's statement, and the original screen grab we had of the fallout, are below the fold.

Said Kevin:

...after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

– Matt Buchanan

Digg's Explanation [Digg Blog]
Kevin’s full post [Digg Blog]