“What’s a hulu? In August 2007, this question ricocheted through the blogosphere to a chorus of derisive laughter. Fox and NBC were going to make the Internet safe for television! They were building a ‘YouTube killer’! And they were calling it Hulu! It was almost too perfect—an absurdist topper to the idea that two major broadcast networks could devise an Internet video service people would actually use. The name was even more delicious than the venture’s placeholder moniker, NewCo., which the online world had changed to Clown Co. And now Hulu? It means ’snoring’ in Chinese, one blogger declared. ”Cease’ and ‘desist’ in Swahili,’ Michael Arrington reported on TechCrunch. ‘Perhaps they should have just stuck with Clown Co.,’ he added.

Jason Kilar read these posts and winced. A 36-year-old ex-Amazon.com executive newly relocated to Los Angeles, Kilar had followed—even admired—many of these bloggers for years. Now he was Hulu’s CEO, and their ridicule wasn’t so funny.

What’s a Hulu? Kilar had gotten the same question from Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation, Fox’s corporate parent. In English it means nothing. In Mandarin, when pronounced another way, it means not snoring but ‘bottle gourd,’ which, in an old Chinese proverb, stands for a ‘holder of precious things.’ If you say so, they responded.

Even Kilar was starting to wonder whether he could make this thing work. Along with the new name, he had just announced that Hulu, which he had been running for only seven weeks, would launch in beta in two months—much later than expected but far too soon for a team that had barely gotten started. He was heading an operation of 20 people holed up in an office suite in West LA. To meet the deadline, he had turned the place into a bunker: Newspapers covered every window. People were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor. Half-eaten pizzas littered the empty cubicles. Fruit flies were the only visitors.

But Kilar would make it work. He and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one…

(Via Wired News.)

(Via Lifehacker.)

What do I mean by ‘all kinds of data’? First, music. Ever seen a music video on YouTube that isn’t really a music video, but simply a song with some pictures slapped on it just to kill the boredom? There are plenty of services for sharing audio files out there, but kids are using YouTube because they’re used to it, because it’s simple, and because all their friends are using it. AP has an interesting article on this topic.

It doesn’t stop at music. You can find song lyrics (karaoke style) or even chords embedded in some videos; some users are sharing photos simply by stringing them into a video with music, etc. Video is definitely not the best vehicle for sharing all these types of data, but I see more and more users doing it; for them, it obviously works better than other available options.

Now, I’m not really sure if expanding focus to other types of data is the best course or even a good idea for YouTube. But I see untapped potential here; users are obviously already using these features - although they’re not quite there - so why not provide them? Of course, the folks at YouTube would have to be extra careful not to overly complicate the service and/or confuse their users. But if they pulled it off well, it might turn out to be a very smart move.

Please, feel free to voice your opinion in the comments: should YouTube add support for sharing other types of data, or should it stick to video only?

(Via Mashable!.)

More people are watching video online than ever, with the percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewing online video now topping 75%.

What’s this mean to you?

In a few years, your television will be more like your computer than a traditional television.

comScoretoday released July 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month.

Other notable findings from July 2008 include:

• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

Google Sites Maintains Dominant Position

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed (representing a 44 percent share of the online video market), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 446 million videos (3.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 282 million (2.5 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 269 million (2.4 percent). Hulu ranked eighth with 119 million videos, representing 1 percent of all videos viewed.

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (92.1 million), who watched an average of 55 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.9 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.6 million) and Microsoft Sites (32.6 million).

(Via Podcasting News.)

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The líst is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.

For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website

I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. Del.icio.us was one of the first and a very popular example of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important. Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that líst your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazëd at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities

When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites. In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content

If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a Wordpress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffíc.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website

First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog provides you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow and become more informative, thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

(By Jason OConnor - The Net Gazette )

OK, I get that. Perhaps you do, too. But, most people don’t. And nothing makes that more clear than trying to explain to a family member why you use it or, more so, trying to convince them to sign up.

My wife recently joined up with Twitter, mainly because I tell her every now and then of interesting exchanges I’ve seen on the site. However, she has participated very little. She tells me it seems stupid. Seems like a waste of time. ‘Why do I care about what other people had for lunch?’, she asks.

Valid question. I tell her, though, that perhaps she is just following the wrong people. The value you get out of Twitter is in who you follow and then, secondly, who follows you.

So, what benefits might there be to Twitter that your average non-techie family member might identify with? Perhaps:

• The fact that you can connect with people from around the world in real-time.
• The fact that you can ask a question and perhaps get an answer from your network.
• The fact that many companies are on Twitter and that can give you an ‘in’ with them
• The fact that having a wide social network is valuable as an asset

At the end of the day, too, many of these people aren’t going to see the light until they actually experience the social interaction that Twitter can offer. Once they see that people actually talk back, they’re more likely to like it.

It helps that we’re seeing Twitter become more used in mainstream circles. I’m even seeing it mentioned on TV now. It also helps that Twitter has drastically improved their reliability. I haven’t seen a fail whale in some time now.

So, have you successfully introduced anybody to Twitter who isn’t a geek? And if so, how? What makes it finally click for a person?

(Via David Risley.)

At issue is the case of Kane Kramer, who allegedly invented technology that drives Apple (and other) music players 30 years ago - but hasn’t seen any return on his investment.

It appears Kramer’s claim to have invented some element of the music player was borne out by Apple in its case against Burst.com. Apple flew Kramer to California to give evidence during that trial - Kramer could prove prior art in the case.

The UK inventor put together a concept called the IXI in 1979. A digital music player, the original conceit stored only 3.5 minutes of data on its chip, was credit card sized and held a rectangular screen along with a central menu button.

While Kramer was able to patent the invention then, 1988 saw his company fail to secure the £60,000 needed to renew the patent across 120 countries “and the technology became public property”, the Mail reports.

While he no longer has claims, he was able to help Apple defend itself against Burst.com. He told the Mail: “To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all.”

Kramer is negotiating with Apple for compensation from the copyright that he owns on the drawings, but has received only a consultancy fee so far - despite Apple’s billions of dollars in the bank.

The British inventor last year had to sell his house and move his wife and three children into rented accommodation

I had one of those days this last week. After what felt like a busy day of ‘work’ I realized I’d not actually produced a single blog post.

As I looked back over my day and the things that I’d done it struck me that there are a lot of tasks that bloggers do that are important - but that can at times become distracting from… well… writing posts… the core task of any blogger.

16 Important but Potentially Distracting Blogging Tasks

Following are 16 potentially distracting tasks for bloggers (note, I’m not saying that any of these are not important or worthwhile, just that they can actually become a distraction if we allow ourselves to become sidetracked by them):

1. Social Messaging - Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Pownce…. (add your favorite micro blogging/social messaging service here). Each can suck up your time if you don’t get focused and put some boundaries around them.
2. Social Bookmarking - many bloggers become somewhat obsessed with writing posts for and then gathering votes on social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit etc
3. Social Networking - building profiles and interacting upon Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc - all useful in building a brand and profile as a blogger, but potentially a distraction.
4. Blog Design - blog design is important at creating a first impression but when you find yourself tweaking it, reworking it, planning your next one more than actually writing content for your blog you might be in trouble.
5. SEO - like blog design there always seems to be something you could do a little better when it comes to optimizing a blog for search engines. It can be worth your time to do some of this, but one of the most effective ways of doing SEO is to write content that hits the spot with readers.
6. Reading other Blogs in Your Niche - yet another great use of time, but many bloggers spend so much time on other people’s blogs connecting, leaving comments and even writing about them that they fail to write anything unique on their own.
7. Reading about How to Blog - this might seem strange coming from a blogger who writes about blogging, but from time to time a blogger comes to me for advice on how to improve their blog who has done so much learning about blogging that my encouragement to them is simply to stop reading about it and start doing it.
8. Guest Posting - I am a big fan about using guest posting on other peoples blogs to expand your profile and grow your readership - however the best way to utilize guest posting is to have great content on your own blog for the new readers you engage with to see when they come visit.
9. Interacting with Readers - this is one that I hesitate to write about because I’m a firm believer in allocating time to spend one on one with readers - however as a blog grows it gets more and more difficult to do. There comes a time where most bloggers need to decide how to strike a balance on this front - boundaries and processes can really help.
10. Networking with other bloggers - another great way to build brand and traffic to your own blog is to connect with other bloggers in your niche - however there are millions of blogs ‘out there’ and it can be an endless task.
11. Monetization - finding and testing ad networks and affiliate programs can take a lot of time. Then optimizing them for your blog and tracking the results and extending your earning potential by finding private sponsorships and ad sales can really eat up even more of your time.
12. Starting New Blogs - diversification is an important and worthwhile part of the journey of many bloggers development, however I come across some bloggers who start too many blogs too quickly and don’t give their early ones time to get going and develop before they branch out.
13. Analyzing Stats - one of the biggest potential time suckers, that many bloggers become distracted with at different times, is analyzing your stats. Sure, you can learn a great deal from looking at who is coming to your blog, from where they come and what they do when they arrive - but at times, when you do it all day everyday, it can be a habit that takes you away from your blogging.
14. Projects/Competitions/Memes - many bloggers wanting to run a competition or project on their blog don’t realize just how much work it can be to manage (or how hard it can be to get them working). They can bring a lot of life to a blog, but they can also be suck you (and your readers) attention away from your core blogging.
15. Dealing with Trolls and Trouble makers - it is SO easy to get drawn into passionate (yet pointless) arguments with other bloggers and readers that can leave you emotionally drained and having wasted hours upon hours of your time. While at the time it seems to important to respond - many times it’s best just learn to hold it in.
16. Tracking down copyright violations - unfortunately in the medium we operate there are people who scrape the content of others, whack ads on it and call it their own. While it can be important to track down these copyright violations down - the statement ‘how long is a piece of string’ comes to mind and some bloggers spend so much time tracking splogs down, issuing DMCA legal notices and attempting to get the content removed that they have little time for much else.

Let me reiterate - there’s nothing wrong with any of these activities…. BUT….

In fact I at different times I’ve recommended and given tips on all of them on this blog! However - this post is about balance and priorities.

While these are all great activities the danger is in those times when they sidetrack us from other core aspects of our blogging.

In my own blogging I try to guard against becoming distracted by:

• Having goals (both long term but also daily goals)
• Being aware how I’m spending time (periodically throughout each day I stop and ask myself if I’m on track
• Setting time aside for the most important tasks (I put aside three mornings a week specifically for content creation - I block out this time and remove other distractions for these times.

What distracts you most from blogging? How do you keep yourself on track?

(Via ProBlogger Blog Tips.)

If you’re looking for front-end web developer cheat sheets (more CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) check outCheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers.

Photoshop

Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

Downloads: PDF (Windows), PDF (Mac)

Keys for using the Layers palette (HTML)

Photoshop Toolbox Reference (HTML)

Photoshop Lasso Tool Cheatsheet

Download: PDF

Photoshop Brush Tool Cheatsheet

Download: PDF

Color

RGB Hex Colour Chart

Downloads: PDF, PNG

Color Reference Guide (PDF)

Web Designer Color Reference Hexagon  Mouse Pad

Download: GIF

Web Safe Color Chart (HTML)

Hexidecimal Color Chart (HTML)

The Browser Safe Colors (HTML)

Typography

VisiBone Font Card

Download: GIF

Common fonts to all versions of Windows & Mac equivalents (HTML)

Mixing Typefaces (PDF)

Units/Dimension

Approximate Conversion from Points to Pixels (HTML)

Megapixels Chart

Download: GIF

CSS/CSS Frameworks

Blueprint CSS Cheat Sheet

Download: PDF

YUI Library: CSS Reset, Base, Fonts, and Grids (PDF)

CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet (PDF)

Apple’s CSS Cheat Sheet Widget (Mac Dashboard Widget)

HTML/XHTML

HTML & XHTML Tag Quick Reference (PDF)

HTML/XHTML Character Entities

XHTML Character Entity Reference (HTML)

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver Quick Reference Guide (PDF)

Dreamweaver CS3 for Mac Quick Reference Card (PDF)

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts – MAC

Download: PDF

Browsers

Will the browser apply the rule(s)? (HTML)

W3C DOM Compatibility Tables (HTML)

(Possibly) Related Posts

• Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers
• 7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design
• 30 Exceptional CSS Techniques and Examples

(Via Six Revisions.)

UPDATED: It’s no cheap exercise to implement a surveillance system to record what goes on at home or at one’s place of business. And as for the hardware, it can still be a pricey endeavor. As with most anything else, much depends on engineering and utility. But there’s a name that seeks to extend such artificial eyes into what it calls Web 2.0 video storage, and do so very inexpensively. GoToMyCamera, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates with the aid of Amazon’s S3 cloudware and enables remote access to video (’surveillance-as-a-service’) at a rate that many will financially regard to be very manageable.

Let’s get right into the numbers. According to GoToMyCamera, part of Eptascape Inc (no affiliation to Citrix, the maker of GoToMyPC), there exist three plans operating on a month-to-month contract. While sign-up costs $5 across the board, a Solo account, allowing for 1 camera, 1 user, and 100 MB of included storage space ($0.25 for extra 100 allotments), will cost just $5. Basic will run you $10 per month, enabling 4 cameras, 1 user, and 200 MB included. And despite what the website may describe, it is $0.50 for each additional 200MB of space.

Higher still is GoToMyCamera’s Business plan, costing $30/month for service with a 10-camera allowance, 10 users, 500 MB included cloud storage. For each additional 500MB, it is $1.50.

There’s a bit of a disparity in the extra storage allotments offered among the Solo, Basic, and Business plans. If storage should be proportional, 500MB would be $1.25 rather than the published $1.50. We’ve contacted the folks behind GoToMyCamera about this. We’ll let you know of their response.

Yet, even with these adjustments, the cost/service ratio is intriguing. Once you have one, two, four, ten network cameras (only Axis Network cameras supported at present), and connect them as required, material pushed to the Web is easily accessed. Vacation on the mind? Perhaps you’re just across town and want to maintain a connection. This is one way to do that - and keep lots of dollars in your pocket.

Update: Marco Graziano of GoToMyCamera wrote back to us about the matter over storage pricing. Here is his reply in full:

I have tried intentionally to keep only storage for additional fees over the monthly fee. It is true that there is an (intentional) small discrepancy between the $0.25/100MB for Solo subscribers and the $1.50/500MB for the Business subscribers. On the other hand, Business subscribers have up to 10 times the cameras of the Solo subscribers with increased bandwidth costs that is not a factor in the pricing. It is not easy to map what Amazon S3 charges us into a simple schema for end-users and this is an initial attempt. I would like to refrain from using number of ‘HTTP PUTS’ and bandwidth in the pricing schema for our subscribers. Somehow they need to be factored in. We will be able to refine the pricing once we have a better understanding of the common usage patterns in real situations.

(Via Mashable!.)