By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

(I’ve opted for my own music during ths post, but I’m still using OmmWriter.)

As readers of this blog may know, I love boxee. I run it on a spare MacBook I have in my living room connected to my HDTV but I’ve never been particularly happy with the remote control options.

The Apple Remote is a bit too simplistic and I find it unreliable, usually due to a bit of latency. I downloaded the boxee remote app for my iPhone and while it works great, you need to leave the application running and the phone on during use. Given the battery drain on the iPhone under normal use, this just isn’t practical for “channel” surfing. It works pretty well for movies, though since I find that I don’t use the remote as often.

Shorter length content is a different story.

When I’m watching, say, TED Talks I want the ability to skip back to review what the speaker may have said or when the talk is over, quickly switch to another one.

I also find that often times, I’m simultaneously using my laptop, twittering and generally just multi-tasking.

Apparently artist and developer J. Celestino behaves the same way and noticed the same thing because he created a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget just for this purpose.

It turns the MacBook on your lap into a remote control for your boxee machine, regardless of what OS it might be running on – OS X, Linux or Windows.

All you need to know is the name of your boxee machine or the IP address and you’re ready for a little remote control fun.

The software is free and available for download now.

Thanks, J!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0