This months open source recommendation is a little less business focused but nevertheless a great piece of software to have in your toolkit. Boxee describes itself as “the open, connected, social media center”. That’s right, Boxee is for those few minutes you get each week to relax and put your feet up.

What makes it great?

If you have ever played with other media center offerings (Front Row, MS Media Center) you were probably let down. Out of the box, certain files wont play and to access web content (iPlayer, Flickr, YouTube) you have to exit the media center application and head for your browser. Boxee pulls it together by not only supporting every file I have thrown at it but by connecting to many web services as well. From one interface I can grab files over the local network, pull in tonnes of web content, download from BitTorrent and even check the weather. The Boxee interface is surprisingly clean and easy to use and the app is also kind enough to fetch film and tv show information from sites like the IMDB. Adding to the excellent experience is a remote control application for iPhone and the recently released Boxee app store which allows you to add extra functionality and content sources.

Boxee is available for Mac, Linux and Windows and requires a Boxee account to download. With your Boxee account you can share your content recommendations with friends on Boxee and other social networks. There is also talk of seeing Boxee ship on standalone hardware (think Apple TV) in future.