hulu

The Walt Disney Company is discussing a deal to take an equity stake in Hulu in exchange for providing the video portal with ABC programming, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed sources, news blog PaidContent says that it's not clear how much of ABC's content would be involved, but a final deal could include ESPN, the sports cable behemoth that has been a goldmine for Disney.

Representatives from Disney and Hulu were not immediately available.

The talks between the two companies reportedly are "serious," but a final deal has not been reached, according to two … Read more

More than 800 digital-media enthusiasts in New York RSVP'd for a Tuesday night "meet-up" held by Boxee, the TV browser software company that's ambitiously (and controversially) aimed to make it possible to have a full Web content experience in your living room.

Right now, Boxee sources content from outlets such as Comedy Central, Netflix, CBS (which publishes CNET News), and Web video content hubs such as Blip.tv and Next New Networks.

In conjunction with the get-together, Boxee (still available only for Mac and Linux) made a few notable announcements: First of all, it's overhauled … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--With panels and discussions every year about social engineering, hacking, remixing, and culture jamming, South by Southwest Interactive is the must-attend conference for geeks who want to shake things up.

Maybe that's why the many panels at the conference about the future of media--from print to broadcast to music to film--were tinged with the message that fast, often radical change is necessary. With panel topics like "How Copyright Law Failed The Digital Age," "New Think for Old Publishers," and "Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter," this year's SXSWi promised to … Read more

George Kliavkoff, the former NBC Universal exec who helped conceive of Hulu, is joining the Hearst Corporation, the century-old company known more for newspapers than digital media.

Kliavkoff, who has one of the best track records for building digital media services from the ground up, will become the executive vice president and deputy group head of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. He will report to the unit's president, Scott Sassa, the former CEO of Friendster and Uber.com.

The news was first reported by Peter Kafka at All Things Digital.

The unit Kliavkoff joins is responsible for managing the company'… Read more

Video hub Hulu now lets its members amass friends lists much like a standard social-networking service, the site said Thursday.

You can now invite friends from your e-mail address books or Facebook and MySpace accounts, and then see a feed of what your friends have been watching, commenting on, or subscribing to.

In the event that you find this creepy or don't want your boss to catch on to the fact that you watch reruns of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia all day long you can disable these activity-feed features.

The announcement comes in conjunction with the one-year … Read more

We get a call from a person in Chicago directly affected by the idea of Craigslist shutting down the erotic section of its service. We also have a rousing discussion about the quality of digital music and Rafe comes close to telling a Bris joke. But he doesn't.

Compact Disc turns 30 http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/compact-disc-turns-30-mp3-doesnt-bother-to-send-a-gift/

Survey shows increasing preference for MP3 by youngsters, audiophiles weep http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/survey-shows-increasing-preference-for-mp3-by-youngsters-audiop/

Wolfram promises computing that answers questions http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/08/2155216 … Read more

2nd Update 10:10 a.m. Saturday: To include an updated statement from Boxee.

Update 4:30 p.m. To include quote from Boxee blog post.

Less than a day after Boxee made adjustments to again access Hulu's content, the video portal responded Friday by again blocking Boxee. But on Saturday morning, Boxee presumably made more changes and the service was back to accessing Hulu (who can keep up?).

Boxee is a startup that streams Web video to television set-top boxes. Dave Mathews, who works as an evangelist and adviser to the company, expressed frustration Friday at what has … Read more

The Washington Post and job search engine Simply Hired announced Friday that they have inked a deal that will allow Washingtonpost.com users to access Simply Hired's database of listings on the publication's site. According to the companies, Simply Hired's listings will be placed in widgets on news story pages. Most of the listings will be in Washington, D.C., but there will be some national listings, too.

In what may be a strategy Hulu might pursue with more shows going forward, the company announced Friday that it has posted answers from Joss Wheldon, the creator of &… Read more

Media-center start-up Boxee, which aggregates Web video for television set-top boxes, has launched a new version that restores access to video hub Hulu. The NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture had pulled its content from Boxee after content partners took issue with it.

But it's not really the same: Boxee has brought back Hulu by extending its support for RSS feeds, and is pulling the video content in that way.

"Like IE, Firefox, or Google Reader, the RSS reader supports Google Video, Yahoo, YouTube and feeds from many other websites," a post on the Boxee blog by CEO … Read more