If you've been beta testing Big Screen Headlines 2, you may have noticed that the program stopped working on August 1st. So far, no new beta has been released, so the best RSS/podcast application for Windows Media Center has been unavailable for most of the month.

It looks like developer Nial Ginsbourg is putting the finishing touches on the next version of of Big Screen Headlines and expects to push out a new beta within the next week or so. Here are a few of the new features you can expect:

• New menu system with 4-way navigation
• Support for displaying thumbnails, comments, and other extensions
• More options for sorting/filtering/viewing feeds including forward/reverse ordering and the ability to change text size
• Support for dynamic OPML 2.0

It looks like the full version of Big Screen Headlines 2 should be out soon. So if you've gotten used to having a free RSS reader, you might need to dig into your wallet and find $15-25. No beta lasts forever. Well, except perhaps for Gmail.

[via Ian Dixon]

One of the first things I noticed when I set up my home theater PC running Vista Media Center is that there are some pretty cool online features. You can watch a huge library of music video's MTV's Overdrive interface for MCE, or watch The Daily Show on Comedy Central's Motherload page.

There are also a ton of obvious online features missing. For example, no built in weather forecast application? What's up with that? Luckily there are plugins for pretty much anything you could ever need (including weather forecasts).

But what about podcasts and video blogs? Surely there must be an easy way to download and enjoy online media from Media Center's 10-foot interface. Well, there kind of is. You can subscribe to feeds and automatically download enclosures with Internet Explorer 7 or the podcatcher of your choice. Then you can tell Windows Media Center to monitor your download folder and your files will show up in your My Videos and My Music folders. This is hardly an elegant solution, so here's a few better options for you: