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Posts Tagged ‘while-the-other’

The new 2010 Volkswagen GTI is a stylish and versatile piece of machinery.

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Test Drive: 2010 Volkswagen GTI

A Japanese company called NTT Facilities , a subsidiary of telecommunications behemoth NTT , obviously has enough time for something cool like this: The so-called Solar-UFO [JP], a UFO-shaped vessel that serves as a water purifier and is powered by solar energy. The Solar-UFO is 1.6m high, 5m in diameter and weighs 3.4 tons. It’s equipped with solar panels that help purify the water (around 9,000 liters per day).

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The Solar-UFO is a UFO-shaped vessel that serves as a water purifier

Earlier this week Facebook made the landmark (and long-awaited) announcement that it was going to enable the “Open Stream“, granting developers far more access and flexibility to Facebook data than they had before. To commerate the event, Facebook held a special Technology Tasting at its Palo Alto office, where it gave everyone an idea of exactly what developers could do with the new data.

We saw some impressive demos, including an example from Plaxo of how social sites could symbiotically exchange data with Facebook, followed by a walkthrough of the upcoming version of the new Seesmic Desktop. But out of all of them, by far the most visually impressive was a pair of applications put together by Microsoft. Yes, that Microsoft. In less than 72 hours, two small teams managed to put together a pair of applications built on the new Facebook APIs that really show off just how robust a Facebook application can be. The first app was built in Microsoft’s Silverlight platform, while the other is based on .NET.

I managed to get some footage of the demos during the event, but honestly it didn’t really do the apps justice (that’s what I get for trying to record with a video camera in each hand). So I got in touch with the team at Microsoft, which put together the high quality walkthrough video above. The video is narrated by Brian Goldfarb, Director of Microsoft’s Development Platform Group. Are the apps innovative? Not especially. But damn if they don’t look cool.

For those of you itching to try these out for yourselves, I’ve got bad news: you can’t. At least, not yet. But Microsoft will be releasing an SDK and the source code for both of the apps in the near future.

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Hulu has just released the latest in its series of star-studded ads, this time featuring Dennis Leary in a spot called ‘The Leary Mission’. He plays an alien trying to turn humans’ brains to mush by watching TV online. In the ad he gives the following instructions: “Now I need you to take your stubby little human fingers and hit this button on Hulu. Then you can share those TV shows on your bliggety blogs and your Facey-spaceys and your Tweety pages for all of your bookwormy anti-Boobtubey friends.” How could we resist putting the ad on our own bliggety blog:

As I’ve noted before, while Hulu doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously with these ads (how many other brands portray themselves as alien plots?), they may well play a key role in Hulu’s long term success. The TV shows and movies offered by Hulu are already popping up on competitors like TV.com, and more recently YouTube, though the latter is still quite a ways behind.

Hulu dominates in terms of selection for now, especially with Disney’s recent stake in the site (CBS, which owns TV.com, is now the lone major network holdout). But there’s still a good chance that these sites will converge and feature a near-identical library down the line. Hulu continues to refine its user experience, perfecting its search engine and streamlining its player to be as user friendly as popular. But nice design only goes so far, especially when the others can easily copy it.

So Hulu is trying making itself a household name, becoming the de facto leader both in selection and brand recognition while the other guys barely have their foot in the door. So far, it seems to be working - Hulu is the number three video site in the US, and is well on its way to taking second place, just behind Google’s properties.

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