Yesterday afternoon boxee was selected by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and judges Ryan Block (gdgt), Molly Wood (Cnet), Jeff Pulver (VOIP/Online TV pioneer), and Kevin Kelly (Wired) as America’s Next Top Gadget (err, software?). boxee beat out hundreds of other companies to win the competition and will receive a turnkey exhibit booth at CES along with a check for $50,000. But success can sometimes be fleeting and all of this attention may not be a good thing. Its support of other technologies like Hulu is a hack and could be at one point or another pulled by updates from the content creators. Also, as it is a USB dongle that goes on an AppleTV, could be foiled by an AppleTV upgrade in the near future if Apple deems it competition the the iTunes Music Store (with Hulu, it certainly seems like it could be). Finally, the process of putting the image on a USB dongle and getting the AppleTV to boot from it isn’t a cakewalk for your average AppleTV customer. All of that being said, it is a cool technology and the price is, as they say, free as in beer. Mac Soda reported the news on Friday
