There's an important Xbox 360 feature that we Mac users just don't get -- the ability to share music, pictures and movies from our computer with our 360. For Windows users it's a matter of installing a free program and calling it a day but, for some reason, Microsoft has chosen not to port that functionality to the Mac. Sure, we can load an iPod with our media and plug it into the USB port, but that's not quite the same as seamlessly accessing the entire contents of your Power Mac's 120GB hard drive over your local network.

Thankfully, we have the independent Mac software community to fill in gaps like these -- and in particular we have Connect360 from Nullriver. Connect360 makes sharing your media easy, automatically detecting music from your iTunes library, pictures from your iPhoto library, and WMV movies from your Movies folder. (Yes, sadly the only movie format supported by the Xbox 360 is Microsoft's own WMV. Your best bet for converting your own movies to WMV? The costly-but-effective WMV Studio; $49 from Flip4Mac.)



Using Connect360 is a snap -- the program installs as a System Preferences pane and sharing your files is as easy as hitting the "Start" button. Your Mac then puts on its best John Hodgman suit and your Xbox 360 treats it just like it would any other network-connected Windows box. If anything the whole procedure is a little too hand-holding -- I would like to see future versions give more control over which directories are shared. After all, not all of us keep our photo collections just in iPhoto, or our movies just in the movies folder.

All in all, though, Connect360 is a great way to get your Xbox 360 and Mac talking to each other. A full copy is $20 but you can download a limited demo version from Nullriver. Give it a try.