Here in Katie’s Head

(All I think about is The Industry these. I’m sorry I’ve got none of the personal dirt you’ve come to expect from me. I’m considering a format change.)

I got bored this weekend and ended up watching a lot of shows on Hulu.

What is Hulu? It’s News Corp. (Fox) and NBC Universal’s attempt at a video-on-demand site, built so they can make money and so people will maybe stop illegally uploading TV shows to YouTube. It’s a greed thing, basically.

But I kinda love it. The site’s easy to navigate, there’s quite a bit of content (OPENhulu has an incomplete list, but it’ll give you an idea), the ads are unobtrusive and the video player has lots of options (pop the video into a separate window, make it full screen, embed a customized clip somewhere else, etc.). Will it stop people from uploading copyrighted videos to YouTube? Hardly. But will it make money? Sure.

So I’ve decided it’s my duty as a media type, TV freak and beta tester to report on my findings.

Reasons I love Hulu:

1. I’ve got a wide range of options. Current shows like Heroes and Friday Night Lights, shows from my childhood like Doogie Howser and Buffy, shows that Real Growups reminisce about like WKRP, and a few random movies like The Jerk thrown in.
2. You can create a custom clip by setting the in and out points of the video. Want to post a single scene to your blog? Easily done. (I dream of the day CBS gets in on this so I can make clips of favorite Barneyisms from How I Met Your Mother.)
3. The videos play smoothly, with shorter commercial interruptions than any of the network’s other video players. I only saw it buffer once in MANY hours of playback (this is how I pass time while doing laundry), and that was during peak traffic, I think. One video took a few extra seconds to load, but that may have been because it was fetching a “for mature audiences only” pre-roll. (Who knew It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia wasn’t for children?)
4. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for. I haven’t used the search because it’s so easy to browse to the exact video I want.
5. The site layout is clean. It’s getting slightly more cluttered with time as they integrate the advertising (pretty sure that wasn’t there earlier), but it’s far less ugly/busy/confusing than, say, NBC.com’s video pages. Maybe that’s because they’re trying for a Web 2.0 look. I’m sure it won’t last.
6. You can review each episode/clip. If you’re into that. Not sure if user reviews impact the “most popular” listings.

Things that suck about Hulu:

1. They’re still holding back content. They’ve got the first season of Buffy, but where’s the rest of the series? Maybe I haven’t gotten my fill of human-on-vampire makeout sessions.
2. New episodes don’t show up as quickly as they should. Friday’s episode of Friday Night Lights was on NBC’s site on Saturday morning. Why doesn’t Hulu have it yet? Where is Wednesday’s episode of Project Runway? They’ll both be there eventually, but by the time they turn up, I may have resorted to piracy to get my fix. You can’t keep a TV addict waiting, NBC.
3. It’s not available internationally (yet). I know there’s lots of legal whatever that has to be done first, but…come on, this is the internet. Open it up.
4. The “related videos” make no freaking sense. Watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and they suggest Firefly. Huh? Watch Heroes and they suggest Family Guy. Hmm. Maybe they’re related by…also being on Hulu? I often play the videos in the popout window, and if they’d just link to the next episode in the series, I could keep watching (increasing the number of ads I see and boosting that valuable time-spent-on-site statistic).

So that’s more good things than bad things, and all the bad things are fixable. In a time when TV is as threatened as we newspaper people are…

…it’s nice to see TV companies making a right step in the web direction. Hulu, I’ve got high expectations. Keep up the surprisingly good work.

Posted: 8:27 pm · Category: Interactive, TV · Comments: None

This season of The Wire features storylines from The Baltimore Sun. The only difference I can tell between the fictitious scenes on the show and real life in the newsroom is that the show’s writers slightly overestimate the sophistication of our speech patterns.

I hear that The Eagle used to have a photographer who pulled the exact same stunt way-back-when.

Posted: 4:33 pm · Category: TV, Work · Comments: None

Congratulations to Al Tompkins for accepting that his column is actually a blog, and finally treating it as such. It drives me crazy that Poynter keeps these great “columns” stuck on bizarro software instead of letting them fully flourish on software with fully-integrated comments, trackbacks, (better?) archive navigation, etc.

Posted: 8:53 am · Category: Interactive, Links · Comments: None

This would be so much funnier if I weren’t one of the douchebags in question.

My excuse is that at work they expect me to be up-to-date on all the latest web bullshit. And if I tell them it’s complete bullshit, they usually believe me.

But the more time I spend evaluating trendy new Web 2.0 shops, the more their shiny colors start to seep into my brain. And suddenly I’m a Twitter user. I’ve become one of them, one of the new media douchebags.

My solution is to stay as far away from my computer as I can during the weekends. And forty eight hours without email and IM is a beautiful thing. (Facebook updates on my cell phone don’t count.)

Posted: 11:25 pm · Category: Interactive, Work · Comments: None

I need more people to trade icons with on IconBuffet’s “Free Delivery”, if any of you are the free icon-loving type. I need to use up a serious stockpile of stamps if I’ve got anything in my collection that you want.

Not that I’ve really found anything to do with my 72 sets of free icons yet, but I’ve got some ideas brewing.

Posted: 8:41 pm · Category: Interactive, Links · Comments: None

No one remembers my acclaimed internet radio station, right?

I like my Web 2.0, but I sorely miss the turn-of-the-millennium internet radio. WiredPlanet shaped my musical tastes for life, and Live365 let me share that with the world. For free.

Anyway. A couple random musical thoughts:

Casey posted about the new Bishop Allen release a couple months ago. That album quickly became one of my favorites (and I’m glad to still be getting some entertainment value from Christian Rudder since The Spark shut down). Check it out.

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles about the fifteenth anniversary of R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People. I’m one to roll my eyes at celebrating anniversaries of non-earth-shattering events, but there’s a reason that “Everybody Hurts” has become the cliché of every self-pity mix tape/CD ever made. You know you feel something when those strings come in. So I finally bought a legal copy of it.

Posted: 12:03 pm · Category: Music · Comments: 2

1. When you’re 16 years old and angsty, start a community website where you can vent your angst.
2. Wait for other kids to join in on the venting.
3. When the organization you’re all complaining about wants your ear, do your best impression of a mature grownup.
4. Wait.
5. When that organization you’ve been mocking discovers it has a need for the niche expertise you’ve cultivated over the past seven years, run to the nearest post office and apply for an expedited passport.
6. Pack.

I leave Saturday afternoon.

Posted: 7:37 am · Category: Big Things, Interactive · Comments: 6