There’s a big community that popped up around AppleTV even before the product came out. Then came the hacks almost instantaneously. Even I found myself checking the somethingawful.com forums 5 times a day. People have ported apps, games, rss readers and what not onto the little device that could. People can open it up and install a new hard disk, but the last time I checked AppleTVHacks.net nobody has been able to mod it without cracking it open yet. Why did Apple not make it better? Sure, they are coming around to it by making ‘enhancements available for download’ sometime in the future. Who cares?

XBMC or Xbox Media Centre is the best out there. I have an original XBOX in my living room with the latest version of XBMC running smoothly. I can play every single media file known to man, stream it from the network or the internet, use plugins to interface with almost every well-known website and much more. Why has this software not been ported for mainstream use yet? Why have smaller hardware makers not embraced it for use on their proprietary machines? I recently heard about the Team XBMC hiring Linux developers for the same purpose. Wonder what can we expect to come out of this? Only good, I bet.

Google Maps launched a new feature for their already great map utility - 360 Views of streets in Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco. How come they don’t buy higher resolution satellite photos of India? Or, have street level photos of cities like Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai for this type of service? I get it, not enough reported broadband users!

But don’t the mobile users count? They could create a better Mobile Google Maps application and let the nearly 150 million subscribers download and benefit from these value-added services.

Wake up Google!

Download link

There’s something about Vande Mataram as a poem, a song or just the two words by themselves. But this album - Vande Mataram - An Electronic Exploration just blew my mind. That sample should prove that you guys ought to grab it. The link is for Virgin Digital, but I am sure there are other places you can pick it up as well.

Digg.com Link - A man was arrested for using a smudged $2 bill at Best Buy in Maryland, USA. It took the Secret Service to determine that the bill was legitimate. This is hilarious!

There has been a lot of talk about PayPerPost ever since they launched. Backed by Draper Fisher Jurveston with $3 million in funding, they are a controversial new service where bloggers can choose what companies, products or services to talk about by selecting the right ‘opportunity’ from PPP.

PayPerPost has changed they way they deal with the ethical dilemma and become clearer about their disclosure requirements.

I wonder if I should give it a go.