Come join Lyfesaver74 & DieBagger as MediaPortal takes to the air, live at a California AM radio station on Tuesday August 23rd at 9am PST.

Wake up early or go to bed late, do whatever it takes to take part in MediaPortal's first live radio interview. Tech Today with Ken May has invited us to sit down and talk with them about the various facets of MediaPortal. You can listen live over the air at 1400 AM KKZZ or online at http://kenmay.net/. A pod cast will be available shortly after the show is over.

Listeners are encouraged to call in with questions, tips or just to talk about MediaPortal. If you are in the US and have access to free nationwide calling, then call us live on the air at 805-639-0008. If you are outside the US and wish to participate then simply log on to facebook, navigate to Team-MediaPortal page and post questions for us on our wall.

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How many people have heard of MediaPortal?

Many people have heard of Windows Media Center, or other media center software, but few realize MediaPortal offers a free alternative, with more features and options than any other Windows media center available today.

Even those who have heard about MediaPortal are often not aware it has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year or two and has become a very stable, feature-rich application.  The look, performance, capabilities and ease of use have all improved dramatically.

It's time to change public awareness about MediaPortal!  As I reported in the Inside Scoop 1.11: Team Top Ten Countdown last December, we are beginning a promotion campaign in 2011. A new tri-fold brochure about MediaPortal is already available on our Promotional Materials page.  Click images to enlarge.

In addition, Lyfesaver74 has recently joined Team MediaPortal as our first Public Relations member. He successfully showcased MediaPortal at the Big Design 2011 Conference in Dallas, Texas. You can read his report Dallas Tours MP at Big Design 2011.  He has many ideas and lots of enthusiasm, which I am sure you will hear more about in the coming weeks and months.

How can you help?  Read on and find out!

Howdy from Texas, y'all!! 

MediaPortal (MP) put in its first trade show appearance last weekend at the Big Design 2011 conference in Dallas, TX. With the help of many MediaPortal users & the friendly staff at Big Design, it was a big success. It was held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Addison, a suburb of Dallas, and provided table space in the main hall. Each conference room was located off the hall giving heavy traffic to each of the exhibitors throughout the day. MediaPortal was located at the top of the stairs, right outside of the keynote conference room. With such a great location the MP table had extremely high visibility and was able to spend a lot of time catering the curiosity of others. Out of roughly 150 attendees, 40 vendors and numerous conference and hotel staff, over 200 paid a visit to the MediaPortal table. 

The most shocking thing to me was how much fun I had. I really enjoyed meeting the other vendors and learning about their products/services. The most enjoyable moments were when demoing MP for visitors. Some were truly amazed by what MediaPortal could do and seeing them realize MP's personal potential was thoroughly pleasing. I hope others consider this if they ever think about running a booth for MP. It was a really good time and we reached quite a lot of people, some of whom installed MediaPortal overnight then came back the second day to chat about MP. 

aMPdroid was almost as big a hit as MP itself because in the US if it's mobile, then it's hot. Everyone wants an app for that, and Diebagger has delivered. We were able to show off aMPdroid 0.7 at the show with great success on a 10" ePad. Everyone thought the remote control function was neat, but were more impressed when I talked about the then forthcoming version 0.8 with streaming. Some were so excited about the idea of being able to watch home local content on their mobile without having to pay a 3rd party service, that they were nearly doing backflips. 

As you can imagine, Big Design's main focal issue was design itself. A lot of comments and feedback were left by visitors on how MediaPortal looked and felt, 95% of which were positive. Some left thinking that they could skin MP while others left thinking that they could help develop it in some way. One visitor offered to recommend a friend to help with ATSC coding for live TV in the US. 

I believe the show was a great way to help spread the popularity of MediaPortal and cannot wait until my next chance to do so again. I encourage other MP users to do a show in their area, as I am sure you will have a great time and be a huge benefit to MediaPortal itself.

One of the most reliable signs that summer has arrived in Norway, is the nonsense-news popping up in the media. We even have a name for this phenomena; 'Cucumber News'. Who cares about cucumbers? NO ONE! Still, the media keeps spitting out this kind of nonsense news. Don’t believe me? Have a look here (translated by Google).

In light of this, here are some 'cucumber statistics' from the forum.

Have you developed the most amazing plugin or skin ever?  After all that great work, why not get your little bit of fame?  How do you get users to try it? Are you doing all you can to promote it?

Promoting your extension is not easy at the beginning.  We know that and want to help. Team MediaPortal provides a variety of services that can dramatically increase the profile and use of your extension. Read on to find out how!

One of the hot topics these days is accessing your home media through mobile devices. There has been much talk about remote apps for android and iphones from large companies like google (google tv), samsung, sky, hbo and many others. Open Source doesn't sleep and so our friends at xbmc also created an android remote control app.

Since I am developing one of the mobile solutions (aMPdroid) for MediaPortal and have kept close track of everything "mobile" going on in the MediaPortal community, I thought it would be a good idea to write a few words about what is already possible with MediaPortal when it comes to mobile access and what is coming in the near future: