Actually, if anyone's going to sue Hulu it should be Mr. Sulu. There's not, after all, that much difference between the ability to navigate to the stars of online video and the ability to navigate among the stars on video.

Okay that should get the geekiness out of my system for a while.

Now NBC's had a spat with Apple, and is withdrawing its content.

As Michael pointed out, Apple's spinmeisters have masterfully seized control of the situation, making NBC look downright rapacious ($4.99 an episode! Highway robbery!) Apple's also pulling the plug on NBC's shows before the new season starts (robbing NBC of the opportunity to promote new programs via iTunes). That hurts both sides, but shows Apple's dead serious about this.

I suppose if NBC's JV with News Corp, Hulu.com, offers BSG next day for free, that's a fair enough alternative in my book, and lets me keep watching online legally if I need to.

But it's our view that in these early days of online video, it makes more sense to distribute video content far and wide (controlling piracy of course) so that it is where the audience is, rather than making the audience seek out the video. And iTunes is where the audience is today.

Here's hoping this all gets resolved before the year is out and I can still get my cylon fix on my laptop or iPod if I want it there.

But once in a while, nostalgia wins out, as in the story in the LA Times about the end of Time--that is, the service where you could dial a free local number and get a recorded woman's voice, well, telling you what time it was. For the kids reading this, this was useful if you wanted to synchronize watches, or reset the clock if you had a blackout, back before the Internet and cellphones.

The article's well worth reading, even if it does go overboard with the time-related turns of phrase ("To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.") It turns out that in every state but CA and NV, Time ended long ago, but for whatever reason, it hung on there until this year.

For telecom history geeks, there's some good historical stuff about the Time Ladies over the years, and how the gear worked, and even, if you're particularly geeky, the interesting fact that:

"AT&T says doing away with time would enable the creation of about 300,000 new phone numbers in California beginning with the 853 or 767 prefixes. (No such numbers have been issued to date because, when coupled with any four other digits, you get time.)"

So another little piece of Ma Bell history fades in our new, dynamic age of communication. This one probably was a little past its prime, to be sure.

At The Tone, The Time Will Be...The Future. Beep.

His reasoning for this?

"So today I saw 300 on HD, it rocks!

So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!"

The Gizmodo folks speculate entertainingly about some of the other persuasive things Paramount could've done to inspire this sudden about face, but then again 300 buff, mostly naked, hi-def Spartans wreaking mayhem can be very convincing.

It's certainly an example I'm going to be citing often of the ever-more-blurry line between professionally created and user-generated video. Or at least of the co-opting of the latter by the former.

But does anyone think this is going to make Monday Night Football any more appealing? I mean, outside of the families of the folks whose videos get selected...

This bucks an industry trend; while Jupiter hasn't made a call on which format we think will win, with Blockbuster and Target Blu-Ray only, and Blu-Ray disks outselling HD DVDs 2 to 1, the momentum seemed to be in the other direction. I think smart consumers are going to be all the more reluctant to buy both Blu-Ray AND HD DVD after Paramount's announcement.

And it's not just consumers who are in a bad way; Paramount has also apparently ticked off director Michael Bay as well, who posted on a message board yesterday:

"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!"

Creative types are SO sensitive about these things! There's hope for Michael Bay, though: Spielberg's movies for Dreamworks will still be available in Blu-Ray. Perhaps other directors will be able to negotiate similar arrangements.

In the course of this, one of us mentioned "Battle at Kruger," a current huge (and non-copyright-infringing) YT hit-- 12.7m views and counting!-- featuring some exciting African wildlife action. It's an example of YT video becoming part of the culture, as everyone (at least everyone at a birthday party for a small kid in the UK) seemed to know about it.

On seeing it, it occurred to me that the one kind of illuminates the other. Watch "Battle at Kruger," with the following in mind:

Buffalo calf: YouTube
Hungry lions: Media companies
Crocodiles: Lawyers
Big herd of buffalo: Google

The moral is something like: if you're a juicy young buffalo calf, everyone wants a piece of you, but sometimes the big herd wins in the end.

Oh and the tourists? I'd say "press"...but "analysts" might work as well.

Comcast's doing 3 things at present: national TV listings, movie tickets (hello, Fandango), and online video (heavily geared toward pro content--movie trailers, TV episodes, etc.)

The most interesting thing I've run across so far is something called "Six Degrees." On most show info pages, you can click on the six degrees button and it pops open a new window with the show or actor you're looking at and an array of 5 other related things, presented in an interactive flashcard style. Click on one of the other cards and you see 5 new things. Breadcrumbs indicate past things you've clicked on, and related titles, actors, and tags are presented in a more traditional list form at the bottom of the screen. Haven't played with it enough to give a thumbs up or down yet, but I'm intrigued by it.

Although the video destination market is getting extremely crowded, Comcast brings a lot to the table. I'm looking forward to seeing how Fancast evolves.

"A free online archive of current and classic television commercials, movie trailers and other brand-related content, Didja.com is a social networking destination that reinvents the commercial viewing experience by celebrating advertising as entertainment."

I fully respect the notion that the best commercials attain the status of cultural reference points, and more than that, they're art (Sony did an ad for its Bravia TVs in Europe featuring a kajillion bouncy balls in San Francisco that takes my breath away every time I see it). And sure, those greatest ads are things people might want to watch online.

But does that really call for a destination site that sounds like it's going to bury the very best amongst, well, every other commercial ever made? I'm kind of doubting it. Only about 8% of consumers said commercials were a genre of video they watched online in the past year; better than movies and traffic video, but way behind the leading genres (news clips, music videos and movie trailers, and yeah, the last one (or two) are kind of commercials, but cut me some slack).

There's industry interest around commercials of course, but that's pretty well served already, for example by AdForum.

I've been a fan of video sites on specific topics as an antidote to YouTube's catholicism. But whereas topics like travel and anime come with ready-made audiences, I'm not so sure I think commercials do as well as a standalone motivator to go to a destination.

The price seems high, but this is very smart. It's probably easier to buy a virtual world phenomenon than to create your own. Despite lots of competition in the kid social space (Neopets--which Viacom bought a couple of years ago, Habbo Hotel, Webkins, etc etc), CP has a strong community, good buzz, and it's growing fast.

Still, Disney has to be careful not to alienate the user base; while community-based social offerings have some inherent stickiness to them, if groups of friends decide they'd rather play elsewhere little will stop them.

Disney has been talking about launching a pirate-oriented massively multiplayer for years now (planned for this fall), and of course pioneering kids' MMOG Toontown is still around, too. But with the end of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, who knows how long pirate chic will endure? And Toontown's been around for ages.

By contrast, penguins are cool, and assembling a stable of multiplayer offerings aimed at different ages and interests is better than putting all your eggs in one virtual basket.