There are a lot of great apps out there for Windows Media Center. They all have a lot of different jobs and 3rd party developers have done a great job in providing applications that let you do just about anything from catalog your DVD collection, check the local weather, or read recipes while cooking. There’s even an app that provides you mix directions for different drinks.
What do you do if you’re looking for something to make your content viewing more social? Sure, you could manually go to Twitter or Facebook and update your status but that’s a lot of work just to let people know what you’re doing. If you enjoy using social networking sites though, there is an app that will do everything automatically for you.
The Media Center Status Application started out as a Facebook only app. It allowed you to update your status and show people what you were watching within Windows Media Center. The developer has been hard at work however and has added Twitter support as well. Now the app will tweet whenever you start watching/listening to some content. For TV, it gives the name of the show. Video, the file name will be sent. With music you’ll tweet the artist and the album/track. It’s a good way to let people know what you like.
The app installed without incident for me on Windows 7. There’s a configuration app which can be accessed from the desktop. This allows you to setup what you would like to have shared as well as other options. One that is really important is who on Twitter you’d like to see status updates from. The app will pop up a window with twitter updates from the people you follow while you’re using Media Center. This window will close on it’s own, but unless you either follow very few people or don’t care that you have a small window constantly popping up, you’ll want to specify which people on Twitter to share messages from.
There are other settings available as well. You can set these as you like and then close and save the configuration. When you next enter Media Center, you’ll be prompted, in separate windows, to login to both Twitter and Facebook or which ever you’ve decided to keep up to date. Once you enter and save your login information, you won’t have to do it again.
Overall the app works really well. If you want to share your viewing/listening habits then this is something you’ll want to install. The ability to only update either Facebook or Twitter is helpful as well since I found that people on twitter didn’t seem to like the updates. Why I’m not sure, as it’s not as if I flooded the servers but in the three days I tested the app there were several comments. A better way to use the application might be to have a separate twitter account and follow people that you want to see tweets from while away from your PC.
If social media is your thing and you want to share your Media Center experience, head to the homepage for the app and download today!