The August Community Technology Preview of Information Center aka InfoCenter is now available for dowload.
It should be pointed out that this is a CTP - not a released product/project. It's still rough in spots, but it's more than functional enough for people to start using it and deriving value from it. The work on categories (searching), media syncing, more media management, rating, and some other bits is coming next.
I've pre-stocked the directory with almost 200 channels, so there's plenty of content. I will be adding even more channels this weekend, and you can always add your own channels via the 'Manage My Subscriptions' area of the guide.
As I mentioned when I first started talking about this, it's free. If you like it, great - if you think there are opportunities to make it better, definately let me know.
I will be working on an updated version very soon (likely this weekend) that will alert you to updates, as well as allow you to provide feedback / report issues directly through InfoCenter itself. Until that next drop, if you send me an email a mmercuri@infocenter.tv or mmercuri@microsoft.com, I'll make sure to review the issues.
It should be pointed out that InfoCenter does take a dependency on certain things. While it's very flexible, if you download a podcasts in the .MOV format (Quicktime), it will require Quicktime software to play it. You can download Quicktime from here (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html). If you already had iTunes installed, then you've got quicktime, if you don't - you'll probably need to install that via the link.
In addition, if you want to play videos from YouTube, they use technology from Macromedia. Chances are this is already installed on your machine, but if for some reason you don't have it installed, you can install it from here (http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW)
The downloadable file can be found on http://www.informationcenter.tv
Enjoy!
-Marc
