Paige Albiniak

Daily DigVid Review: Stewbert Gets Its Hulu On
June 10, 2008

Take that, YouTube! Viacom is allowing NBC/Fox’s Hulu.com – along with Comcast’s Fancast, AOL Video and MSN – to air episodes of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report even while it sues Google/YouTube for $1 billion for airing those shows without permission. A Viacom spokesman says that it’s to get the shows out to even more people in a heightened political season.  Meanwhile, the blogs go nuts with the irony of it all:

ArsTechnica: Viacom flips YouTube the bird

Silicon Alley Insider: Score one for Hulu

TechCrunch: Game Over. Hulu Wins. (also Michael Arrington apologizes for not believing in Hulu from the get-go.)

Still, neither ABC nor CBS is jumping on the Hulu bandwagon. In March, Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth explained why.

Hulu also added content from PBS, albeit to much less fanfare, including Nova, Carrier (excellent, if you haven’t gotten a chance to check it out), Scientific American Frontiers and Weird Science starting later this month.  

I resist blogging about this because I can’t really get an iPhone because 1) I am locked into my contract with Sprint for the rest of eternity and 2) I keep spending money on other things like bikes and new car tires, BUT people are really digging the new iPhone. The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg writes that it’s now faster, cheaper and now more flexible (with regard to third-party applications), but it’s still also tied to AT&T (see my complaint above) and has a crappy camera. OK, I don’t care about the camera but I hope people like Mossberg keep complaining so other carriers will soon be able to offer iPhones (and by that I don’t mean knock-offs). WSJ blogger Ben Worthen also wonders whether businesses will soon come on board the iPhone, which would go a long way toward knocking Blackberry off its smartphone pedestal. All that said, I do love my Blackberry. It's changed my world.

Break Media and Twisted Pictures on Wednesday will release a “full-length online feature horror film” called Vlog, starring Web blogger Brooke Marks, according to TV Week. The somewhat clever part is the lead-up, in which Marks talked about guys, dating and relationships on her profile page (which includes lots of videos of pretty young things dancing around in their underwear), and then suddenly stopped posting. More story elements appear on another Break site, HolyTaco.com, which mentions Marks’ death. It’s the not the first time a Web property has been marketed virally, but it’s always a good way to use the media. The “feature film,” which could also be called a Web series, will start rolling out in daily installments starting tomorrow and running for four weeks.  

Finally, Nicholas Carr of The Atlantic asks this highly relevant question: Is Google Making Us Stupid? Or at least too ADD to read? Yes, I say fervently.

Posted by Paige Albiniak on June 10, 2008 | Comments (0)