faboo mama

Image via CrunchBase

Last summer when I was first introduced to Hulu, I thought it was a nice service. There were a few movies on there that my kids enjoyed, some clips of TV shows I had once found amusing, but for my taste it was definitely lacking.

I’ve been a Netflix customer since 2001 (You can add me as a friend here). Naturally, the service is more appealing to me; the DVDs come and they go back when I feel like it. But Netflix changed the game when they offered up Watch Instantly. Suddenly, we were hooking up our laptop to the TV so we could watch the available movies & TV shows.  Last fall, when Microsoft enabled Netflix on our Xbox 360, we saw no reason to keep our bloated cable package.  We still have our basic cable +HD tier, but we’ve scaled back our other packages losing HBO, Starz, IFC and Encore; the movie channels we’d watch on those rare times we turned on the TV to zone out. But since the only show we actively watch on TV is LOST, anything else flies under the radar. (Sidenote, we never actually sit down to watch LOST when it’s on, instead we watch it on the DVR about 30 minutes to an hour after air time. Even if we didn’t do that, we could still watch LOST on ABC.com the next day.)

These past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of checking out Hulu. If you’re subscribed to me on FriendFeed or have clicked the FriendFeed tab above, you’ve seen the recent Hulu clips I’ve posted. (You can also subscribe to me on Hulu if you’re in the US and have an account.) Yes, the site is still a headache to navigate, but if you take the time to go through the genres available, you’ll find a lot of gems.  One feature I’m in love with on Hulu is the embed feature. On Friday, I took the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, narrowed down to the song I wanted and embedded that clip into my Tumbler blog.

I used to rely heavily on YouTube to show my kids clips of old TV shows I used to watch. On YouTube, the quality of these old show clips are usually quite horrible.  Last night, I pulled up several Sesame Street clips that I’ve watched on YouTube and was amazed at the high-quality of the clips.  Even comparing movies available on Hulu versus movies available on Netflix Watch Instantly, Hulu wins out with the better quality video watching on the same computer. Piping Netflix through the Xbox 360 as a Time Warner Cable customer leaves a lot to be desired. The video quality is on par with watching an old VHS cassette on a VCR taking its last breath.

With Netflix you’re paying monthly, naturally that means no ads.  On Hulu, short ads (30 seconds) are interspersed throughout the episodes or you have an option of watching all the ads at once and then have uninterrupted play.  You can also vote on the ads, which makes viewing them a little more tolerable. The ads you rate down, don’t get shown any more. The ads are so non-invasive that I’ve never even bothered to count how many times you get interrupted during a show. Unlike say, watching ABC.com, where the ads are way too long, and you have that 15 second - 30 second buffer at the end of each 1 minute bank of ads. I can not speak to YouTube’s ad policy on their Shows page, as I haven’t witnessed any ads during the short test periods.

YouTube recently announced its Shows page. The genre breakdowns mirror Hulu’s and most of the content available on YouTube is also available on Hulu.  Running on my netbook, where a Hulu show can take about 13 seconds to load, YouTube shows take about 2 minutes. The only appealing thing YouTube has that Hulu doesn’t is a Foreign movie section, with automatic subtitles. That means, for me several full-length Bollywood classics. This works for me because I often rent them from the local Indian markets and the quality of the DVDs are often bad.  Some of the same Bollywood movies are available via Netflix Watch Instantly, but then we’re back to the quality, and yes YouTube offers better quality than Netflix in this case too.

Between Netflix, YouTube and Hulu, I’m hard pressed to find a valid reason to keep my cable. It seems the only reason I have it, is so that the kids can watch their shows and my husband can watch the HD channels in the wee hours of the morning. Sure, there are bonuses of cable, such as the ability to let the kids watch OnDemand in our bedroom, streaming music from MusicChoice, even though we use Last.fm or Pandora more often than we play our physical albums. Right now, having cable is the only thing keeping our internet bill low, but that’s becoming more and more less valid as a reason. After all, why pay for something we’re not using?

Image by Captain Nandu Chitnis, BikeNomads via Flickr

President-Elect Obama’s new site, Change.gov went live today. Right now, the site is taking a pretty big hit, and is slow.  The page links are interesting and shore up President-Elect Obama’s promise to make his administration more transparent than previous ones.  Check out the Ethics link:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan

Shine the Light on Washington Lobbying

• Centralize Ethics and Lobbying Information for Voters: Obama and Biden will create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings in a searchable, sortable and downloadable format.
• Require Independent Monitoring of Lobbying Laws and Ethics Rules: Obama and Biden will use the power of the presidency to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so that the public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated.

There’s even a box on the page, so you can make suggestions.

Mirroring the key issues and interests that were on Sen. Obama’s candidate sites, the website expands those policy positions into actionable items.  There is a blog, a listing of upcoming events beginning with the inauguration and a link to apply for non-career jobs with the Obama Administration. You can share your own story of your experience of living in this moment in American history on the site too.

Throughout his campaign, Sen. Obama was persistent and consistent in stating that the American citizen should be ready to work for America.  That students who wanted help with their college education would have to do community service.  Sticking to that pledge is a link that helps you to find a suitable place for you to work for your country.

When the site isn’t so bogged down, take a look around.

I have no words as I’m still laughing.

iGooge stop messing up features!

I like cats. I love cats. At least in theory. The reality is that cats hate me and the ones that have belonged to neighbors have always led me to believe that cats are really Satan’s familiars and must be stopped. Not that I’d kill a cat. I’m not Bill Frist. I just don’t want them shitting in my yard, shredding my plants or triggering my allergies. Yes. It is all about me. If I didn’t have such horrid allergies, I’d probably adopt a cat or two in heartbeat. I like them that much. Especially kittens. They’re so cute and fuzzy and awwwwww.

But, it’s time to take a stand. As far as the internet is concerned must we all be subjected to cats? Seriously. The lolcats aren’t funny. They really, really aren’t. I’ve never understood why or how they got popular, but there they are and they’re sucking the life out of the internet.

I mean, I should be able read a car blog or hip-hop music forum without those fucking cats popping up. Am I asking too much? I don’t think so, but today I hit my fucking peak with cats. I used the NaBloPoMo randomizer twice today. The first time, I hit 7 cats blogs out of 12. I should clarify. They weren’t even cat blogs. They were blogs that just had those stupid lolcats things on them. I did it again later and out of 6 blogs, 4 of them were cat blogs.

People…there will come a day where questions and responses will just be lolcats and all real communication will shut down, thereby killing the internet.

Just a warning.