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XBMC celebrates 10 years, latest build works in mainline PVR and Raspberry Pi support
First, we must congratulate the entire XBMC team on reaching the tenth anniversary of one of the project's first betas hitting the internet, when Yet Another Media Play (YAMP) and Xbox Media Player joined forces to create something beautiful. It's outlived the original console by far, powered other projects and spinoffs (Boxee, Plex, GeeXBox -- just to name a few) and is still going strong. Just to show how much progress it's making there's a new monthly build that adds two features most will have to wait for XBMC 12 Frodo to try out. If you like to live on the edge, the September cycle includes mainline PVR support, which pulls in TV broadcasts thanks to PVR add-ons like MythTV or MediaPortal, as well as integrated support for the Raspberry Pi. Other tweaks include performance enhancements on Android, better picture zooming and rotation on mobiles and much, much more. Hit the source links for a full changelog and details on what dangers running a build hot off the presses may entail.
Media Temple launches beta for VPS running on Leopard Server
Teaming with Parallels, Media Temple has just announced the start of private-beta period for its latest (mt) Labs offering, the (xv) Xserve-Virtual -- which they are dubbing "the world's first VPS Leopard Server." Although virtual servers running Linux or Windows are pretty standard hosting options, this is one of the first Mac hosting opportunities I have seen period (outside of a co-lo), virtualized or not.Now that Apple has sanctioned the virtualization of OS X Leopard Sever on Apple hardware, both Parallels and VMWare have announced plans to integrate Leopard Server virtualization into their product lines. While VMWare is integrating Leopard Server in its upcoming version of Fusion, Parallels is taking a decidedly more enterprise approach and working Leopard Server virtualization into its Parallels Server product. Parallels Server uses Parallels' bare-metal hypervisor architecture and as such, each virtual machine runs its own kernel and operating system. Media Temple, which already partners with Parallels in its (dv) and (dpv) Nitro products, is going to be the first official hosting launch partner for Parallels Server for Mac, offering Leopard VPS hosting on Xserve hardware. The Xserves used by (mt) are running 2 x 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400s with 32GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM and 3x300GB 15,000-rpm SAS with 16MB disk cache drives on a Xserve RAID Card. In the private beta (apply here), the Xserves will be split into 8 virtual machines, with each VM guaranteed 2 GB of RAM and two cores of CPU resources. The advantage of using a virtual machine as opposed to a physical Xserve, aside from cost, is that hardware maintainance is taken care of by the host. Plus, if something goes completely haywire, the virtual machine can just be reinstalled to its starting point.The (xv) can be used to host websites, run iChat and iCal server, use Podcast Producer and for anything else a regular Xserve running on a LAN can do. Anything you can install on a regular Mac, you can install on the (xv), and you can control the (xv) using both Screen Sharing and Remote Desktop. Media Temple is still working on the scalability plans for the (xv) but are planning on offering a scale-on-demand package similar to its (dv) product.Although pricing is currently undetermined, Media Temple will be using the beta testing to find out which configurations are most efficient to help set the ultimate price.If you have experience running a Mac server, you can apply for the (xv) beta here. It's really exciting to see OS X virtualization, both for enterprise and for home/small business use take off. I can't wait to see the final product!Thanks Jen and Jorge!
Media Temple boasts iPhone friendly control panel
Media Temple, a well known hosting provider, has recently rolled out a beta version of their control panel made just for the iPhone. Judging from the number of folks who sent this to us (thanks to all of you!) there seems to be a large, and until now, untapped market of people who want to be able to register a domain from anywhere.Aside from registering domains you can also restart services, pay your bill, add email addresses, and submit a tech support ticket. I'm not a Media Temple customer myself, nor do I own an iPhone (and we all know how I feel about iPhone specific web apps) but I must admit this looks slick. You can access the iPhone version of Media Temple's control panel here.
