The European Union announced today that it will ask the European Court of Justice for a legal opinion on the highly protested Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

For those not familiar with the trade agreement, ACTA is an international treaty aimed at giving countries the ability to stop copyright infringement and other forms of intellectual property theft — a standard framework so that all countries around the world can charge and prosecute digital piracy. However, many Europeans have protested against the trade agreement under the claim that it could stifle free expression on the Internet while not directly addressing the problem of piracy in a meaningful way. ACTA has also come under fire due to the secrecy behind getting EU trade partners to sign the agreement without consulting the public.

The court is being asked to determine if ACTA — as well as its implementation — complies with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, according to EU trade head Karel De Gucht.

“Let me be very clear: I share people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms … especially over the freedom of the Internet,”  De Gucht said in a statement reported by the BBC. “This debate must be based upon facts, and not upon the misinformation and rumour that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks.”

ACTA has already been signed by 22 EU member states, including the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Canada. More recently, countries like Germany and Denmark have refused to sign the agreement due to the widespread protest across the continent. Since ACTA is intended as a universal framework for stopping digital piracy, having a few key democratic countries that do not comply will likely weaken the overall effectiveness of the trade agreement.

Image via kihupotru

What’s a scientist to do when they want to connect with a colleague and share research? They can’t just go Facebook to share their guarded secrets, which is why ResearchGate was created.

“ResearchGate is a full-blown network for scientists and researchers to connect, share and collaborate; they can login through their Facebook accounts as well, a representative for the company wrote in an email to VentureBeat, “Research/Science is moving to more openness, and with global mass adoption of the Internet and smartphones, people’s norms and expectations are changing in how they interact with each other online.”

Co-founder Dr. Ijad Madisch (pictured above) got the idea for ResearchGate while studying for his PhD. He wanted a way to connect with other science students to collaborate and share knowledge. Scientists can post information and reports, connect with their peers to exchange ideas, and collaborate on problems. The social network has been up and running for four years now, with 1.3 million members from the scientific community.

ResearchGate fits in with the trend of scientists shying away from publishing research to scientific journals and instead flocking to sites like ArXiv and PLoS to publish work quickly. ResearchGate takes online publishing a bit further by adding a social element. Members of ResearchGate can comment on published research and offer feedback, which isn’t available on other scientific publishing sites.

ResearchGate raised its first round of institutional funding in September 2010, though the company hasn’t disclosed how much money it has received. Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, Michael Birch, and David O. Sacks participated in this latest round. The company is based in Berlin, Germany and has more than 40 employees.

Microsoft has gone after Google before in ads attacking its search and Gmail products, but today the big M has launched a new off-kilter commercial showing off Google Apps’ biggest weaknesses.

The video, titled “Googlighting,” portrays the Google Apps productivity suite in human form as “Googen Apperson,” a slimy salesman who shows up an hour late to his appointment. Apperson has 12 years of advertising experience and is meeting with an executive to sell her company Google productivity software. The executive asks a lot of tough questions, and Apperson squirms in his chair, unable to answer most of them.

Without mentioning it by name, the video is trying to attract businesses to Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software. Office 365 brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange, and SharePoint to the cloud and aims to make collaboration for teams easy. Outside of having more familiarity with businesses, Microsoft is hoping to position its software as better for your company’s privacy in light of Google’s recent controversial privacy changes.

Personally, I didn’t find the ad that funny, but it does make a lot of fair points. While Google Apps is cheaper that Office 365, it still has quite a few limitations. Chief among them is that Microsoft Excel is miles ahead when it comes to spreadsheet creation and management. Excel might be boring on its face, but it is one of the most important applications used in business today. In my hands on with Office 365, I made the case that Excel in the cloud could be the number one reason businesses choose Office 365 over Google Apps.

You can watch the full ad here and leave your comments below:

Comcast is launching a new streaming video service called Xfinity Streampix, which takes aim at similar services from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime.

The move is most likely a response to the growing number of people who are ditching their expensive cable TV subscriptions and relying on the web (as well as premium streaming services) to fulfill their video consumption needs. That said, Streampix isn’t a direct competitor of Netflix because it isn’t a standalone service.

Streampix, which goes live Feb. 23, is only available to Comcast customers with a double- or triple-play subscription package. That means you have to be subscribed to both the TV service as well as an internet or regular telephone plan to be eligible. For those with a more basic subscription service, Comcast is charging an additional monthly fee of $4.99.

While you’re still likely to spend upwards of $100 per month to Comcast to quench your third for video entertainment, you’ll at least be gaining a “streaming anywhere” service that’s cheaper than Netflix and Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month each). In terms of content, Streampix will offer programming from Disney-ABC Television Group, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and children’s entertainment network Cookie Jar. When you combine that with what’s already available on Comcast’s Xfinity TV service, it’s a decent amount of content.

“We also recognize there’s a marketplace for streaming deeper-library movies and TV shows and that’s where Streampix comes in,” wrote SVP of Comcast Video services Marcien Jenckes in a recent blog post. “With Xfinity Streampix, we’re adding more past season TV shows, more movies and more value to our customers’ subscriptions.”

Like Netflix, Streampix will also be available on multiple platforms, such as Xbox 360, web browser, iOS devices, and Android devices.

I’m curious to see how this pans out for Comcast in the long run. Streampix is likely to attract people who are more or less satisfied with their current cable TV subscription, but curious about streaming services like Netflix. But Netflix is definitely hustling, offering its own original programing and signing exclusive licensing deals with notable film studios like The Weinstein Company. Plus, Netflix is only $7.99 per month plus the cost of a reliable internet connection.

Streaming video service Netflix has finalized a new content deal with film studio The Weinstein Company that brings a new crop of foreign language, documentary, and critically acclaimed movies to U.S. subscribers, the companies announced today.

Under the deal, many new films will appear on Netflix exclusively within one year of their theatrical release. Some of those films include French-language World War II drama Sarah’s Key, The Intouchables, Madonna’s Golden Globe winner W.E., Coriolanus, documentary Bully, and 2012 Academy Award nominee The Artist.

The deal is of significant importance to Netflix because many of these films usually make their first non-theatrical debut on premium cable channels like HBO, Showtime, and Starz. This also goes a long way toward proving just how big of a threat Netflix may prove for those premium channels in the future.

Netflix has stated on multiple occasions that it views companies like HBO as its biggest competitor, rather than comparable streaming video services like Hulu and Amazon’s Prime offering. And like HBO, the company is rolling full steam ahead with its own original content strategy. Additionally, Netflix eventually wants to be nearly three times as large as HBO with 60 million to 90 million domestic subscribers, according to a recent presentation published by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

This isn’t the first time Netflix has gobbled up a content licensing deal that normally would go to premium cable channels. In September, Netflix announced a deal with Dreamworks Animation, which was previously held exclusively by HBO.

The Artist image: The Weinstein Company

Barnes & Noble is launching a new $199 8GB Nook Tablet to better compete against Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire Tablet, the company confirmed today.

Since the Kindle Fire’s November launch at a mere $199, the $249 Nook Tablet has had a hard time attracting customers who were in the market to buy the cheapest tablet, as my colleague Sean Ludwig previously pointed out. The Nook Color is also dropping to $169, which makes it the cheapest available tablet option for most people.

Unlike the current 16GB Nook Tablet model, the new $199 Nook Tablet will have only 8GB storage, which makes sense since plenty of digital media (e-books, e-magazines, games, music, and other media) is increasingly moving to the cloud. The new Nook Tablet still has a microSD slot for expanding its storage (it can take up a 32GB microSD card).

I’m guessing that since Barnes & Noble is reporting fourth quarter revenue increases for both digital and physical sides of the business, the company is seeking to continue its strategy of making the Nook a loss leader to boost sales everywhere else.

Nook Tablet photo: Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble missed Wall Street expectations with its fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, but at least it had some positive news on deck. Not only did the company announce the $199 8GB Nook Tablet, but also its overall Nook business is up almost 40 percent from a year ago.

The company is in the midst of transforming itself from a brick-and-mortar bookseller to one supported by hardware and digital sales. The big question on investor and consumer minds is if the company can survive in the long-term with incredibly strong competition from Amazon on all fronts. Amazon’s price-busting $199 Kindle Fire is the reason Barnes & Noble launched the $199 Nook Tablet, and it will remain the primary competition for the foreseeable future.

Barnes & Noble reported that revenues were up 5 percent against the year-ago quarter. Net income ended up at $52 million, which is flat from last year’s earnings. Third quarter earnings per share ended up at $0.71 a share. Analysts had predicted $1.01 per share.

The biggest positive of the report was that the total Nook business revenues were up 38 percent year-over-year to $542 million. Nook hardware sales, including the Simple Touch, Color and Tablet, increased 64 percent year-over-year. Digital content sales, including digital books, digital newsstand, and apps, increased a massive 85 percent against the year-ago quarter.

While the news was decidedly mixed, investors did not appear to be shaken in early trading Tuesday. Barnes & Noble’s share price on the NYSE was slightly higher at $13.24 per share, a 1 percent gain for the day, as of this writing.

Barnes & Noble store photo: Brokentaco/Flickr

Kiip is announcing today that it has hired Zynga’s ad boss Manny Anekal as chief operating officer.

San Francisco-based Kiip is a fast-growing startup that offers real-world prizes as rewards in mobile games. Hiring Anekal from recently-public Zynga will add some cachet and some executive firepower for the company, which is headed by 20-year-old entrepreneur Brian Wong.

I can imagine that a lot of business people might not take a company with a 20-year-old CEO seriously. But Wong has built a track record for his company, launched numerous products, created several key partnerships, and has raised money. If the company needs some extra cred because Wong isn’t old enough or lacks experience, then Anekal can bring that to the company as its global chief operating officer.

“Kiip is undeniably one of the world’s most innovative companies with a great story to tell — they’re also sitting at the epicenter of three burgeoning markets: mobile, gaming, and advertising,” Anekal (pictured) said. “They’ve taken an angle that I’ve never seen any company tackle with such prowess, and the growth opportunity they sit on is absolutely massive. I’m excited to help them take this to the next level.”

San Francisco-based Kiip was founded in September 2010 by Wong, Courtney Guertin, and Amadeus Demarzi.

Kiip offers rewards at the moment when you achieve something in a mobile game, such as getting past a level or a boss. Wong calls this “moments based” advertising, or catching a consumer when he or she is having a great time with a game. It recently also started offering Swarms, or mobile game tournaments with big-ticket rewards.

Anekal will be responsible for managing the growth and operations of the rewards network. Anekal led the brand integration and ad efforts with top-tier consumer brands in titles such as FarmVille and CityVille. Anekal has a decade of experience with the development of games and online advertising products. He was global director of brand advertising at Zynga, the social game giant, and he led global ad operations at Electronic Arts. He also had a similar position at in-game ad startup Massive, which was acquired by Microsoft.

Regarding the age question, Wong said in an email to VentureBeat, “I’ve been very fortunate and I’m able to have conversations with the right people who I can respect and they reciprocate. I think the amount of progress we’ve made and the partnerships and brands we’ve struck deals with are indicative of that. I think brands and agencies are looking for the younger generation to propel them to areas they would have never considered. Manny will certainly help, but he’s joked that he’s always felt like the young one too. This industry is also very young.”

Kiip is backed by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, True Ventures, Verizon Ventures, and Crosslink Capital.

[Photo credit: Kiip]

In a straight-out-of-science-fiction move, a new ad campaign can scan your face, determine your gender, and deliver a specific message if you are a woman.

It’s hard to not make a reference to Minority Report, the 2002 Tom Cruise movie, when describing this technology. In the movie, Cruise’s character walks into a shopping mall and has his eyes scanned by an advertisement which greets him by name. It sounds creepy and like an invasion of privacy, but we aren’t too far away from that kind of technology.

The Independent reports that children’s charity Plan UK is releasing the campaign, called “Because I Am a Girl,” to benefit girl’s education in poor countries. The ad will include a computer, a touchscreen, and a high-definition camera that can scan the faces of passersby and determine their gender.

Women and girls will be shown a full message from the charity, while males will just see a message directing them to the charity’s website. The camera measures the distance between facial features to determine gender and the ad’s designers say it will be 90 percent accurate.

This technology is not the first of its kind; in fact, the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas has ads that can give recommendations to passersby. NEC in Japan also collects information like gender and age from scanning shoppers’ faces. Clear Channel, the company producing the ad, says that no personal data will be stored, but I can’t help but think it all sounds a lot like Big Brother.

Minority report image via SEOptimise on Flickr

Patently Apple has found a filing by Google that lays out new ways for a person to control and communicate with their TV by speaking into a satellite computing device, such as a smartphone, tablet, or possibly a remote control. The document covers how Siri-like voice commands would be transmitted to a TV, describes a mobile-optimized TV interface for smartphones and tablets, and touts the advantages of teaming up multiple computing devices.

The patent describes a variety of possible communication setups. You could speak a command into your Android smartphone (“record Nightline tonight”), then the audio would bounce to the Internet, be translated to text, and the text sent to your TV. (Many TVs aren’t likely to have speech-to-text features, so translation would have to take place before the command hits the set.) There is also a description of a direct device-to-TV communication over Wi-Fi, as well as a voice command being sent to remote servers to be translated, then returning to the smartphone and transmitted to the TV directly.

The technology would allow you to switch channels or control what your TV records from anywhere using an Android handset. One use described in the patent is being able to use a smartphone to turn on your TV or start playing music when you’re up to a quarter-mile away from the television, which seems neat and a fun way to pranking your family, if not terribly useful.

As with all patents, the actual execution could take any number of forms. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

We’ll be meeting with ten local tech companies during the day in a feedback session with Peter Pham from Science, myself, and others.

During the evening, we’re inviting members of the Southern California tech community to network at SOUTH (3001 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA) from 7pm to 9pm. We’ll be buying drinks for the first fifty people through the door; sign up here. Do so quickly, because space is limited.

The meetup is another stop in our DEMO Innovation Tour, during which the DEMO team (I’m executive producer of DEMO) travels the world to connect with the global tech community in search of the best companies and products to showcase at DEMO Spring, taking place April 17-19, 2012.

You can get the full details on the event page.

Both houses of Congress passed a bill today that could give Americans access to more of the wireless spectrum; however, this access will cost us some free broadcast TV stations.

If you search for some kind of appropriately named piece of legislation like the “Open up more wireless spectrum so my iPhone browser will load faster act”, you won’t find it. That’s because the bill Congress passed was actually an extension of the payroll tax, which essentially lets people keep more of their paycheck by removing some of the standard taxes.

To pay for this extension, Congress needed a new source of income. That’s where the TV spectrum comes in.

The bill is setting up a voluntary auction for the block of spectrum currently reserved for television broadcasts. Many of the owners originally granted a license for their part of the spectrum are getting a pretty good deal; they paid very little money compared to what it’s now worth on the open market.

To give you some kind of understanding of the spectrum’s value, the 2008 auction for wireless spectrum ended up bringing $19.6 billion, with more than $16 billion of that coming from AT&T and Verizon. Verizon is also poised to pick up a large chunk of wireless spectrum from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks for a cool $3.6 billion (pending approval by the Department of Justice).

So clearly, we’re talking about a lot of money here, of which the U.S. government will get a hefty cut.

Despite the FCC’s countless pleas to make more spectrum available, Congress has mostly neglected to address the issue directly. The payroll tax extension is more or less seen as a way to kill two bird with one stone. And that’s both a good and a bad thing.

The good thing about this auction is wireless carriers will be able to speed up their networks, expand coverage area of high-speed internet to rural areas of the country, and (in turn) create more jobs.

The bad part about this legislation is that it has the potential to sacrifice some the broadcast TV channels that are barely starting to get used by tech companies as a valuable public resource.

For instance, Boxee just launched a Live TV stick, which feeds the HD TV broadcast signal into the company’s Boxee Box set-top box, thus providing owners with a way to both cut the cord and still get some live content like local news and sports. There’s also recent Barry Diller startup Aereo, which uses tiny HD antennas (one per user) to stream the broadcast TV content thru a variety of connected devices.

While I welcome the additional spectrum availability, part of me wonders whether it would have been better for Congress to directly address the issue rather than issuing a voluntary auction to pay an immediate bill like the payroll tax cut extension.

[Via the Washington Post; Gavel photo via ShutterStock]

Despite nearly a year of mostly ignoring its DVD-by-mail rental side of the business, Netflix has decided to start allowing people to choose a DVD-only subscription option, the company announced on its blog today.

The option to choose a subscription package that included only DVD rentals disappeared last year as part of the company’s push toward a streaming future, and it was the first in a series of wrong turns the company made. In July, the video rental company decided to raise subscription rates by 60 percent on its combo streaming and physical DVD plans, which caused a huge uproar among its 25 million monthly subscribers. Then in September, CEO Reed Hastings announced that the company was spinning off its DVD-by-mail business into a separate company called Qwikster — a move that caused an even bigger customer backlash. After plenty of negative criticism and a significant dip to its stock price, Netflix decided to cancel its plans for Qwikster.

Netflix’s argument for wanting to get away from DVDs is mostly logical from a business perspective. The cost to ship DVDs continues to rise as does the price of the DVDs and Blu-ray discs over time due to wear and tear. Streaming, on the other hand, doesn’t have shipping costs and will eventually become the dominant form of how people watch movies and TV shows.

Of course, there are plenty of Netflix customers who don’t have access to high-speed internet, and plenty of others that actually enjoy getting DVDs due to extras like audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and more. That said, it’s incredible Netflix waited this long to give people back their DVD-only subscription option.

[Photo via Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar]

A handful of official U.S. government websites were hacked today in protest of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a highly controversial international trade agreement largely cooked up by media companies to protect their copyrighted content from being pirated online.

The hacktivist group Anonymous is believed to be responsible for the attack. According to the International Business Times, the group posted a strongly worded anti-ACTA statement as well as an anti-ACTA PSA video from YouTube (embedded below) to business.ftc.gov, consumer.gov, and the National Consumer Protection Week official site (ncpw.gov).

For those who aren’t familiar with the trade agreement, ACTA is an international treaty aimed at giving countries the ability to stop copyright infringement and other forms of intellectual property theft — a standard framework so that all countries around the world can charge and prosecute digital piracy. However, many Europeans (as well as Americans to a lesser extent) are against the trade agreement because it doesn’t directly address or stop piracy in a meaningful way. That’s on top of the fact that most government officials signed (or attempted to) the agreement in secrecy, without input from public discourse, as VentureBeat’s Dylan Tweney pointed out previously. More recently, the German government formally refused to sign ACTA.

The affected government websites are all offline this morning, but we’ve pasted a portion of Anonymous’ anti-ACTA statement below. If you’re in a hurry, Anonymous was kind enough to include a TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) line at the bottom, which reads “ACTA is a downright shitty act. We must kill it. With fire.”

“Even more bothersome than your complete lack of competence in maintaining your own fucking websites and serving the citizens you are supposed to be protecting, is the US federal government’s support of ACTA. You really want to empower copyright holders to demand that users who violate IP rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated? You really want to allow a country with an oppressive Internet censorship regime to demand under the treaty that an ISP in another country remove site content? Well, we have a critical warning for you, and we suggest you read the next few paragraphs very, very closely.

If ACTA is signed by all participating negotiating countries, you can rest assured that Antisec will bring a fucking mega-uber-awesome war that rain torrential hellfire down on all enemies of free speech, privacy and internet freedom. We will systematically knock all evil corporations and governments off of our internet.”

Tomorrow’s news organization will be the one that reaches the more than 845 million monthly active users on Facebook, or at least that’s the prediction 11 different media companies are making today.

MTV News, the Today Show, The Daily Show, CMT, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, Mashable, and CBS local affiliates in Los Angeles and New York are among the slew of new and old media organizations releasing news-themed Facebook applications Thursday.

The social news applications are similar in function to the Washington Post Social Reader and the Yahoo News Social Bar, and will give Facebook members the ability to automatically share their media reading and watching activities with friends and subscribers on the social network. The Timeline-friendly apps will also showcase recently consumed content in a box on the member’s Facebook Timeline.

If the success of the first crop of Open Graph applications tells us anything it’s that some of these media companies are in for a wild ride. Several may even awake tomorrow to find an entirely new readership devouring and sharing their content at rapid pace.

“These apps create new ways for readers to discover content, while giving publishers the opportunity to reach new audiences,” Facebook’s director of media partnerships Justin Osofsky said in a blog post on the news apps. “They’re built around news and content people care about and identify with and provide easy ways to control the social experience.”

Yahoo, as Osofsky detailed, has been a beneficiary of Facebook distribution. Yahoo recently released Social Bar, an Open Graph application integrated with Timeline and Ticker. The bar sits above stories on Yahoo News sites and shows readers the Yahoo content their Facebook friends are enjoying. The content application readers consume is also automatically shared on Facebook, drawing new readers into the Yahoo experience.

Social Bar attracted 25.6 million users in its first 75 days, Yahoo chief product officer Blake Irving shared with VentureBeat last week. Yahoo, as a result, sees more than 2 million shares happening every day. More importantly, the lion’s share of application users, Irving said, are between the ages of 14 and 35, with 45 percent of users 24 and under and 60 percent 34 and under. Yahoo users, by comparison, skew a lot older and tend be 35 and older.

“We’re seeing a different demographic coming to the site that we weren’t getting … and, it turns out, they like the content,” Irving said.

Photo credit: Photo Maany/Flickr

“Social is now the ‘newswire,’ the go-to place for important information and edgy discussion,” an MSN spokesperson told VentureBeat. “We created msnNOW so people can cut through the clutter and quickly filter through the overwhelming amount of information streaming on the Web to find out what’s hot, and why.”

By taking out the human editing element and using a program to choose topics based entirely on their popularity with the general public, msnNOW runs into an interesting problem: It turns out the general public is interested in total crap.

The site, now.msn.com, rotates through four stories on top, with well-written headlines such as “Creepy site links rich guys, co-eds” and “Halle Berry’s new movie stars sharks but still seems boring.” To the right of that carousel is a list of top trending keywords, called Biggest Movers, that’s updated every five minutes. The bottom half of the page is a grid of other trending stories that can be filtered by five topics: Fame, Cash, Sweat, Soul, and Wire. The categories seem to be loosely defined, with Bar Refaeli jumping on a trampoline filed under Sweat.

The technology behind the site is a custom tool called Demand Dashboard that MSN’s developers spent a year creating.

“It does all the work to bring together what’s emerging online in real-time and identifies acceleration of trends that are becoming more viral. Specifically, it identifies the topic’s strength based on total volume or acceleration,” explained the spokesperson. The Demand Dashboard then takes the information it collects on a trend and pushes it down the production line to an editorial team for publication.

What’s especially brilliant on the part of MSN is that each story doesn’t link back to the original site, but to another msnNOW page with an image and a 100-word summary of the trend written by one of MSN’s 20 editors. Videos are embedded above the summary, and there are in-text links back to tweets, local news coverage, or Facebook posts. Once you gulp down the bite-sized nugget of information you came for, you’ll be tempted by delicious-looking links to related stories that cover the page. You might be sucked into a never-ending loop of viral news.

Currently, there are no ads on the site, but that will change in a few months when the plan is to make revenue off of advertising and sponsorships. “Once we are very clear of how people are interacting and experiencing with msnNOW, we will offer advertising experiences that are both useful and beneficial for consumers and advertisers.”

The new site already acts as fascinating view into our collective Id. We are all horrible people wasting time at work, and I totally clicked on the headline “Adele song helps a bulldog through some dark times.” The public’s insatiable appetite for dessert content is a problem online journalists are intimately familiar with. You can spend a week on a serious and deeply reported story, but a slideshow about cats bonding with antelopes will rake in the traffic.

I am confident msnNOW will be a hit, since it’s a nicely designed aggregator of other hits. That doesn’t mean it can’t make me sad for humanity. And that sadness does mean I can’t bookmark it and visit a few times a day.

Nintendo’s Wii game console gained some significant ground as a streaming video set-top box with the announcement of a new Hulu Plus channel launching today.

While the Wii does have a channel that allows you to browse the internet, Hulu’s main website is unavailable as is also true for the majority of mobile devices and set-top box web browsers. The new Hulu channel fixes that, provided that you sign up for the $7.99 monthly premium Hulu Plus service. The service provides early access to current TV shows from major networks (ABC, Viacom, NBC, Fox, CW) as well as additional video content not available to free-Hulu users. Wii owners can sign up for a two-week free trial of Hulu Plus, which is similar to promotions Hulu offers to owners of other devices supporting the official Hulu Plus app.

Along with Netflix, Hulu Plus is the second major streaming video service available on the Wii. Having both of those services could make the game console more attractive to people who’ve been itching to buy an inexpensive set-top box. At $149, the Wii is less expensive than a Boxee Box ($199) and a bit more than an Apple TV ($99). However, neither of those aforementioned set-top boxes have a Hulu Plus channel yet, nor do they offer the vast selection of video games available on the Wii.

In addition to the Wii channel, Hulu is also scheduled to launch on Nintendo’s 3DS handheld game device later this year.

To prove the value of its platform, the company is releasing a free Clik YouTube app today for the iPhone and Android, which basically turns your smartphone into an addictively powerful Youtube remote control.

Here’s how Clik works: Simply visit clickthis.com in any web browser, scan the QR code with the Clik app (see right), and you’ll be presented with options that directly control what the browser displays. On the Clik YouTube app, you’ll be able to choose from featured videos, as well as search for YouTube videos, that will instantly start playing on the remote screen.

“Basically, we wanted to give you the Airplay experience with the minimum setup required,” Clik (and Kik) Ceo Ted Livingston told VentureBeat in an interview last week.

Clik joins a bevy of similar apps and services that let you push content from your phone to other screens. But Clik differentiates itself with its simplicity and blazing speed. And since it only relies on javascript, it’s completely device and platform agnostic. You could, for example, use your iPhone to control a Windows or Linux computer’s screen, or pretty much any smart TV platform that features a web browser.

Livingston tells me that the company initially began building Clik and the infrastructure powering it two years ago, but ended up using that technology to power Kik. Today, sending messages on Kik is nearly instantaneous. Now with a mature architecture behind it, Clik offers similarly fast control between your smartphone and other screens.

Clik also offers multiplayer capabilities, which could make for some fun parties. Multiple people can scan the QR code image for a single screen to control it, allowing groups to easily share their favorite cat videos.

The YouTube app is just the beginning for the company, as the technology powering Clik can let you push all sorts of content to your screens. With the Clik platform, third-party developers will be able to take advantage of the company’s tech to create apps that can share pictures, music, and potentially even games on remote screens.

Livingston tells me that most of his company will now be focusing on developing Clik. Its Kik messenger app won’t be going anywhere, but now that it’s feature rich and stable, the company is tackling newer challenges building up Clik.

Front remote image via Shutterstock

While Google maintains its dominance in search, despite big efforts by Yahoo and Microsoft, there appears to be room for young upstarts to grow. DuckDuckGo has doubled its traffic from 500,000 searches a day in December of 2011 to 1 million searches a day this week.

The company sets itself apart with a strong focus on privacy. It doesn’t keep a search history or attempt to provide personalized results through social networking connections. At its current rate of growth, DuckDuckGo is on pace to pass AOL this year, a remarkable feat given the volume of traffic that flows through AOL sites.

But advertisers are increasingly looking to sell highly targeted ads, meaning DDG’s approach to privacy is a real hurdle in terms of growing a revenue stream. That doesn’t seem to bother Union Square Ventures, one of the top funds in the nation, which invested in DuckDuckGo in October of last year.

“Our confidence in Gabriel and DuckDuckGo is informed by having watched the decline of Microsoft’s hegemony in the 90′s,” Brad Burnham, co-founder of USV declared. “We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it.”

DDG differs from Google in that it draws on crowdsourced sites like Wikipedia when establishing authority in search results. It also creates its own pages of content to provide fast answers. As founder Gabriel Weinberg put it, “While our indexes are getting bigger, we do not expect to be wholly independent from third-parties. Bing and Google each spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year crawling and indexing the deep Web. It costs so much that even big companies like Yahoo and Ask are giving up general crawling and indexing. Therefore, it seems silly to compete on crawling and, besides, we do not have the money to do so. Instead, we’ve focused on building a better search engine by concentrating on what we think are long-term value-adds — having way more instant answers, way less spam, real privacy and a better overall search experience.”

Image courtesy of Angela Waye, Shutterstock

The RGM Group figures out how to enable premium brand advertisers to target rich people via online ads. And weak economy or not, the company has benefited as those brands shift more of their budgets for chasing wealthy consumers to online publications.

The Venice, Calif.-based company has been profitable ever since Kamran Razavi started it in 2004 at the age of 25. In an interview, Razavi said the company still has momentum and tripled its revenues last year.

“We’ve got a unique model for premium brands,” Razavi said. “We have ads that hit the right person and do so in the right way. We really stand out in that way. We are more efficient when it comes to deploying advertising.”

In August of last year, the company’s RGM Alliance division, an ad network that places ads from premium and luxury brands, had more than 250 U.S. publications in its network. Those included Yachting, Luxury Travel, Burda Style, Zagat, Men’s Fitness, Woman’s Day, Elle, Boating, and Esquire (disclosure: and VentureBeat). Now RGM reaches 350 publications, including 34 new sites this year.

RGM now reaches 124 million unique visitors per month, compared to 117 million in August. In May 2009, the company had 21 million users per month at 66 publications. RGM is now the 61st-largest ad-focused ad network in the U.S., according to comScore. RGM expects it will enter the top 50 in the next month.

“We are still profitable and we haven’t had to raise money,” Razavi said.

RGM still screens its web site publishers so that it only reaches users that premium advertisers want to target. Razavi says the alliance continues to be transparent to both advertisers and publishers, with no hidden sites or traffic sources.

One of the big growth areas is custom ads created by one of RGM’s own divisions for the advertisers. RGM has created ads for Jaguar, Lexus, and ForeverMark on RGM’s own JustLuxe site, which has millions of unique monthly visitors. RGM is also expanding into mobile ads for the iPad, iPhone, and other platforms.

The company has 35 employees. Razavi said he is proud he didn’t raise a large amount of money, like other digital media companies do, diluting the entrepreneurial spirit. Razavi himself came from Tiffin, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles with all of his belongings in the back of his pickup at age 22. Now at 32, he’s still a young buck.

“I hope my story will if nothing else inspire another young buck to venture out on their own and build a company themselves,” he said. “My story proves this is possible.”

For custom content, the CPM (cost per mil, a measure of ad revenue per 1,000 people) is something like $100. For standard ads, the CPMs are around $8 to $10 for the RGM Alliance. Lower-quality ad networks generate CPMs of $3 to $5.

Razavi said that premium markets have recovered since the recession of 2008-2009, and that has helped the company grow. But he said advertisers are still shifting a lot more of their ad budgets to online publications, and that has helped RGM grow even faster.

“On a global level, we still have a recession-like economy, but online ads could grow 23 percent in 2012,” Razavi said. “People are predicting that online will move past traditional media this year.”

Rivals include companies such as Glam Media, Travel Ad Network, and Conde Naste Digital.

Image courtesy of atyp_koK, Shutterstock

Peanut Labs is launching its Crowdvibe site today to allow anyone to create quick polls or market research surveys with large numbers of respondents in a variety of targeted markets.

Crowdvibe (at the site Crowdvi.be) taps Peanut Labs’ network of more than 50 million consumers on 200 social networks to get users to fill out online surveys that you create. The cost comes out to a dollar per user or less, which is much cheaper and less hassle than setting up an online research campaign. And you can watch results arrive in real-time, with an average of 40 seconds for the first response.

You simply purchase virtual currency that lets you create a survey with one or two questions. The more respondents you want, the more virtual currency you need to purchase. One credit costs 10 cents. 100 untargeted responses cost $125. To get 1,000 untargeted respondents, the cost is about $900. For targeted responses, the price is higher. The web site is in beta testing now.

“As speed becomes more of a necessity, we understand the value of time-sensitive research,” said Noman Ali (pictured below), chief executive of Peanut Labs.

That’s a fraction of the usual cost for scientifically valid consumer market research, and the results you get are far less distorted than online polls, which can be thrown off if a biased party shares a link for the poll among his or her friends, Ali said in an exclusive interview.

“We saw a gap where small and medium business could not get consumer insight the way that the big companies could,” Ali said. “Nothing else can get you data so quickly and cheaply.”

Once you create your questions, you can refine the audience to focus on certain vertical markets, such as retail, electronic and mobile commerce, media and entertainment, consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, travel and hospitality, or banking and financial services verticals. You can pick the age group of respondents, the income bracket, ethnicity, geography, gender, or other lifestyle characteristics.

“It’s a very simple process, as you just fill out the web form,” Ali said.

Once you release the survey, Peanut Labs populates it into its network of users. It offers incentives to users on a variety of platforms. If they answer the survey, they get some kind of virtual good in return. That enables Peanut Labs to get a good response rate and to ensure that the polling is scientifically accurate, since the links for the surveys are controlled by Peanut Labs and are not publicly accessible.

Users respond by voting for any one of two to seven pre-written answers for the poll.

One cool feature is that you can watch the results for your survey arrive in real-time.

“You can get access to 150 or 200 people in 15 minutes, or 1,000 people in 30 minutes to 45 minutes,” Ali said.

The service is targeted at analysts, creatives, and marketers who want to bridge the gap between social media and market research by accessing a huge network of people, without spending a lot of money. They can get product opinions, brand perceptions, and a bunch of feedback on marketing campaigns, promotional offers, concept tests, and consumer satisfaction. Companies such as Endemol US, Landor, Takasago, Kaptur, and 360i have been using the product in the closed beta test.

The idea for the service started around June last year and the full team started working on it in the fall. The team has 30 people now and will likely grow to 40 this year. Peanut Labs is owned by online research firm E-Rewards.

The social networks include sites such as Facebook and Foursquare. Right now, the product is a generic one. Over time, however, Peanut Labs might be able to modify it so that it could be particularly useful to fashion or game companies.

“That might happen, but it’s down the road,” Ali said.

Image courtesy of winnond, Shutterstock

Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC is reportedly working on its own music streaming service, a move that would help the company differentiate its Android phones and tablets from its considerable competition.

HTC used to be one of the leading makers of Android phones, but now the company has taken a veritable back seat compared to Samsung and Motorola. The company has been struggling financially as well, with a significant drop in profit reported in its last quarterly earnings. The company said Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Android phones especially were responsible for the diminished interest in its handsets.

But perhaps a streaming service, alongside new powerful devices, could help rejuvenate some its lost mojo. The rumor that it is working on a streaming service, which was first reported by GigaOM, does line up with some of HTC’s other recent announcements. Back in September, the company made a $300 million investment into Beats Electronics, with the intent of improving sound technology on mobile devices.

On top of that, HTC’s latest flagship smartphone is the Rezound, which has Beats Audio and an advertising campaign focused on listening to music on the phone. HTC’s Sensation XL phone also features Beats integration, and I’m sure we will see further phones and tablets with a high level of sound quality.

The streaming service, per GigaOM, would be the default music client on HTC’s phones and tablets. The company is still reportedly working on plans and pricing, but we would expect such a service to line up competitively with the likes of Spotify, MOG, Rdio, and Rhapsody.

Do you think a streaming service would help give HTC an edge as it tries to win back customers from Samsung, Motorola, and Apple?

HTC You screenshot: YouTube/HTC

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

Image from Flickr user Uncle Catherine

Influential New York investor Fred Wilson was one of the earliest and loudest opponents of the anti-piracy bill SOPA. He worried that it would threaten sites he considered legitimate, like Reddit, or Tumblr, which is backed by his firm Union Square Ventures. But as CNET’s Greg Sandoval reports, Wilson said yesterday that he supports the idea of an independent body which would create a blacklist for known pirate sites.

“If we created an independent body that essentially created a black and white list,” Wilson told a crowd of media executives at the Paley Center in New York. “The black list are those sites we all know are bad news. We all know who the good guys are who are truly licensed and are operating legitimately. And we know who the bad guys are.” CNET reports that Wilson named Hulu, Netflix, Rdio, Spotify and Rhapsody among the good guys.

The tech industry and the entertainment industry have very different ideas of what a pirate site looks like. If they both had equal representation on this independent body, perhaps they could agree on the most obvious villains. Wilson suggested services like MegaUpload, Pirate Bay and the various BitTorrent sites as the kind of sites that would be on the blacklist. “Using technology, we train our youth to know that they’re doing something bad and how they could do something that’s good.”

But piracy is never that black and white. Tumblr, which Union Square Ventures invested in, certainly doesn’t fall under the category of “good guys who are truly licensed. (emphasis mine)” Instead, it’s a free-wheeling community where users often post copyrighted music and images. While you can argue that it falls under the DMCA safe harbor passed by Congress, and isn’t a pirate site looking to profit by distributing tons of illegal content, it is a home to many blogs that distribute links to full downloads of new albums.

As Wilson said at the conference:

“We gotta fix the system so that the content is available legally on the internet in a way that it is available for people to consume it. As convenient as turning on your TV and watching HBO, that’s how convenient it has to be. The content industry has not made this content convenient to access on the internet and as a result everybody, and I mean everybody, is a pirate. Okay so in the world where everybody is breaking the law, you gotta look at the law. Is it the right law?”

Fan-generated sports commentary site Bleacher Report announced a deal with YouTube today to bring four new sports-themed shows to its branded YouTube channel.

The Bleacher Report’s website’s content comes from over a 1,000 columnists and 6,000 contributors that write commentary from a fan perspective. While the new shows will definitely use this fan mentality, it’ll also feature high-profile names in the sports and entertainment world.

The new Bleacher Report channel is part of  YouTube’s strategy to boost the amount of premium original videos available on the site, making it more than just a place to watch funny cat videos and viral content. In October, YouTube committed $100 million in channel partnerships to make sure that this strategy succeeds. Some of these channel partnerships include Madonna’s DanceOn, World Wrestling Entertainment’s Fan Nation, and exclusive bits from the Onion News Network. More recently, YouTube forged deals to bring a variety of news-related channels to the site from partners like Reuters, Young Hollywood and Penske Media-Ion TV as well as a new indie film fest channel in partnership with Ridley Scott.

As for the shows themselves, here a brief description of each by Bleach Report’s news release:

B/R 5

Bleacher Report’s daily dose of the five biggest, best or most buzzworthy sports stories of the day, featuring Desi Sanchez (E! News Now and MTV) as the host.  Available Monday through Friday, the daily show covers the hottest games, athletes, personalities and stories across the sports landscape that is delivered through an irreverent and entertaining style that is unique to Bleacher Report.

NFL Draft 365 

Hosted by Alex Panos (HGTV’s “Run My Money” and SNY’s “Beer Money”), NFL Draft 365 will be the first show of its kind to provide year round coverage of the lightning rod for discussion and debate that is the NFL Draft.  With speculation, storylines and insatiable appetites for information, NFL Draft 365 will fill that void all year-long. Each weekly episode will include a current or former NFL player as a guest analyst, starting with Pittsburgh Steeler QB and two-time Super Bowl champion Charlie Batch. Regular features will include a War Room segment with Bleacher Report NFL Draft Lead Writer Matt Miller, in-depth profiles on top draft prospects, and candid memories from current and former NFL stars on their draft experience.

Why We Watch

Produced by Jim Forman (Showtime Championship Boxing and ESPN Classic), Sarah Kreiger (The Olympic Games), Amir Ebrahimi (NACHO LIBRE) and Chris Peterson (Top Gear USA), Why We Watch features short form sports documentaries that tell unique stories that capture the emotion and passion inherent in why we watch sports.  Each weekly episode of Why We Watch will focus on a narrative unique to the sports landscape, be it a small story with major significance or a fresh new angle on a well-known event. Initial subjects include female auto racing pioneer Janet Guthrie and Robin Ficker, the NBA’s most notorious heckler.

Full Ride

Beginning in March, Full Ride is a weekly show serving information, opinion and analysis about the college football recruiting scene.  Produced by Marc Kohn (Heisman Trophy presentation and NFL Draft), Full Ride will focus on the big programs and five-star recruits that make the college football world turn while uncovering diamonds in the rough that might push the next national championship contender over the top.

Couch potatoes nearly doubled the amount of streaming videos played on mobile devices and smart TVs in fall than it did in the summer, according to Ooyala’s fourth quarter 2011 video index report.

Ooyala offers a video platform for content owners to upload their video, analyze audience engagement, and easily monetize video content. The company claims that nearly a third of all streaming video viewer in the U.S. is done using a Ooyala player.

“While people are still watching much more traditional TV than streaming video, our data shows we’re on a clear and irreversible course toward an IP-delivered future,” said Ooyala Co-founder and President of Products Bismarck Lepe in the report.

The report, which tracks viewing habits of over 100 million monthly users, indicates that the boost in streaming video consumption over connected devices was aided by the October launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S, continued growth from Google’s Android OS platform, and the December holiday season. Video viewing on Google TV was also up by 91 percent from the third quarter, although that’s not exactly saying much if Google TV app install data is any indication.

People watching videos on tablets are also far more engaged than those watching on a desktop, according to the report. On average, tablet viewers were 45 percent more likely to complete 75 percent of video played on the device.

Also interesting was data about social media engagement behavior related to streaming video. Despite Twitter’s attention to tracking real-time viewing habits through tweets, Ooyala’s report found that Facebook users on average share ten times more video than Twitter users.

Check out a condensed sample of the full Q4 2011 video index report in Ooyala’s infographic embedded below.

Hulu is staying silent about the initial viewership of its first scripted original series Battleground, which premiered its pilot episode on Monday.

But the company has a plan to measure viewership in a new way, one that could make a huge difference to the survival of shows that have a dedicated following but don’t necessarily command a particular time slot.

Unlike traditional TV programs, Battleground’s success won’t be determined by evaluating the viewership during a predetermined time. When people watch a show isn’t nearly as important as the fact that they’re watching the show, whenever that happens, a Hulu spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Battleground is a half-hour dramedy (drama plus comedy minus the annoying laugh track) about a campaign staff that’s trying to win a Wisconsin senatorial election for an underdog candidate. The show has some top-notch talent behind it like creator/actor JD Walsh and producer/director Marc Webb, whose film credits include 500 Days of Summer and The Amazing Spider-Man movie. It’s also one of the first high-profile series that’s focused entirely on web viewership.

Normally, the premiere episode of a show with this level of hype would be followed by Nielsen TV ratings along with a breakdown of the audience demographics. But because Battleground is distributed as streaming video instead of television sets, it doesn’t have a standard rating system. And while Hulu definitely collected plenty of data about the show, the company isn’t planning to reveal the details — as is its policy for all shows that stream on its service.

Hulu said it plans on measuring the success of its original programs by the level of activity surrounding it, which includes total viewing audience, comments and discussion, social media interactions, and more. This is good for a number of reasons.

A more honest and accurate form of “rating”

The current Nielsen rating system for TV programming is inadequate because it’s based on of a sample of the population measured by a single company. And while ratings in most casts serve as a determination of quality, TV ratings are little more than an indication of programs that get the most number of eyeballs. Whether those people actually like the show isn’t as easily gauged. Hulu, however, only needs to look at the activity of a particular show over a much longer time frame.

It’s pretty simple if you think about it. If people are watching and talking about a show, it’s likely to get more episodes. The audience can also see a more honest representation of what people actually want to watch because others are constantly buzzing about it. If a show doesn’t have any buzz (after a reasonable amount of time), then its likely that no one will care if it’s gone.

New shows are less likely to get killed off prematurely

Based on traditional TV ratings, plenty of good shows were canceled by networks prematurely because they couldn’t draw a large enough audience to bring in advertising revenue during a designated time slot. Even in situations where the network wants to take more of a chance on a show that’s off to a weak start, it’s far more difficult to justify programs that don’t bring in enough ad revenue.

For instance, Firefly was taken off the air by Fox for this reason, despite becoming a cult classic post-cancellation. With Hulu, original shows are likely to get at least a full season to prove itself because the company is far more strategic about their strategy. Hulu isn’t trying to find decent shows that will fill its prime time schedule alongside some really great shows. It’s also worth noting that Hulu’s streaming service allows it to take advantage of shows that are more valuable as an entire season.

More creative and unique shows

When I flip on the television, my cable service rarely provides me with anything new or interesting. Again, this is due to the current TV rating system, which rewards shows that appeal to the highest number of people across all demographics and time slots. The selection of content is mostly stuff everyone is OK with watching when choosing between lots of bad programming.

This is why there’s an abundance of CSI Spinoffs and reality TV shows. When there is a decently entertaining/interesting prime time show on, network executives are behind the scenes imposing changes to boost ratings. I’m not saying these shows still aren’t able to produce quality content from talented people, but creativity is usually hindered on the basis of business.

Since traditional ratings aren’t crucial to the survival of the program, Hulu executive producers are likely to interfere on the basis of quality rather than ratings. In a Hulu blog post published Tuesday, Battleground creator JD Walsh explained his own experiences of “getting ‘network notes’ or revisions or other things that usually doom or plague great shows,” saying that:

“We did get notes, but they were always an attempt — not to satisfy a demographic or a fad or a meme — but instead the notes were to make the show smarter or funnier or more interesting with its storytelling. The show is better because of the relationship we have with (Hulu’s) Charlotte (Koh) and Andy (Forssell). The show will live or die on my point of view on TV or what the tone of the show is. That’s a testament to the trust that Hulu gives its creators to make the show that they believe in.”

Final word

Hulu is breaking new ground in the way of premium original programming, which it obviously realizes. Ultimately, the company’s success will be based on whether it’s able to produce quality content that’s on par with top TV network programming. Since Hulu is owned by three of the largest broadcast TV networks (NBC, ABC and Fox), it’s even likely that this model could create a new standard for how shows are produced and monetized.

For fans of quirky, quality TV shows, that’s very good news indeed.

Amazon may have far fewer customers signed up for its Amazon Prime membership than analysts previously estimated.

The Prime membership costs $79 annually for Amazon customers, who in return get free two-day shipping on most items sold through the retail giant. The service is attractive to customers because shipping fees aren’t factored into individual purchases. And while Prime memberships increase the shipping costs for Amazon, research shows that Prime customers are more loyal and make more purchases. (I’ve got a stack of graphic novels that more or less proves that this is true.)

The total number of Prime memberships ranges from 3 million to 5 million since October 2011, according to a Bloomberg report that cites three anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter. If the information is true, that would mean that the company has less than half of the 10 million memberships estimated by some analysts.

Amazon was unavailable for comment about the membership numbers. (However, if the company does respond we’ll be sure to update the post.)

Amazon’s goal over the next 18 months is to increase Prime membership to the 7 – 10 million range, according to the report. One way the company plans to boost membership is though Prime’s commercial-free streaming video service. The company recently signed licensing deals with Fox, NBC, CBS, and Viacom to increase the variety of television shows available, which makes the Prime video service more competitive with Netflix and Hulu. But, Amazon clearly wants to use the streaming video service as a perk to boost Prime membership far more than it wants to compete with other video services — (making a standalone Amazon streaming video service even more unlikely).

Even if Amazon is successful in boosting Prime memberships over the next year, it’s unlikely that it’ll lessen the fears of investors who are concerned about the company’s future revenue growth.

Last month, Amazon reported revenue of $17.4 billion for Q4 2011, which was nearly $1 billion lower than Wall Street’s estimates. Not only that, but the company stayed irritatingly silent about its other big ploy to gain customer loyalty, the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. That could indicate that either sales of the device were lower than expected or purchases through the Kindle Fire didn’t reach estimates (or both).

If you combine the slow Prime membership growth and Kindle Fire data silence with the recent rumors that Amazon is plotting to open up brick-and-mortar retail stores across the country, it’s no wonder investors are worried about the company’s future revenue.

Lately, streaming services like Netflix are getting their hands dirty with creating shows rather than just streaming them. The original content is necessary to compete with premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime. Netflix dipped its toes into the original series fray last week with the debut of Lilyhammer, a Steven Van Zandt drama about a New York City mobster. Streaming competitor Hulu also recently debuted its first scripted series, called Battleground, about a fictional politician’s run for U.S. Senate.

Orange is the New Black, the second series Netflix has decided to finance, is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, about the year she spent in a minimum-security women’s prison for drug-related charges. With that in mind, it makes sense that the show is being developed by the creator of Weeds, another comedy TV show about drugs and wily characters.

In the realm of original content, Netflix is also resurrecting the cult-hit comedy Arrested Development by financing new episodes as well as the original drama starring Kevin Spacey called “House of Cards”.

Aereo allows users to view a live stream of programming from major TV broadcast networks (including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) on a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and desktop computers via Aereo’s HTML5 website. The service, which will cost $12 per month, has a DVR function to record up to 40 hours of content that people can watch whenever they want.

To comply with distribution and copyright laws, Aereo employs a tiny HD antenna for each user to pull the broadcast TV signal in. The service is only available in New York City and will launch March 14. No word if the company will branch out into other markets, but we expect that they will.

Aereo “pries over-the-air broadcast television out of that closed system” that forces people to rely on either cable TV providers or an HD antenna tethered to a single television set for access to live programming, Diller told the New York Times.

As the former head of several major TV networks, Diller’s comments are interesting, but it’s unknown how well the service will fare against competitors. The new startup seems to be making the case that with Aereo and Netflix, you can finally cut the cord, but there are plenty of other factors to consider.

First of all big cable and satellite TV service providers are striving to provide subscribers with more live TV/TV anywhere offerings. And Aereo also isn’t able to offer the level of sports programing or premium channels like HBO. Aereo may also find itself in competition with Boxee, which recently launched a Live TV tuner stick that allows owners of its Boxee Box set-top box to access the same HD broadcast networks. Boxee is also rumored to be plotting a DVR service very similar to what Aereo will offer.

During the launch press conference, Aereo didn’t make mention of the recent FCC pleas by major media companies to encrypt those HD broadcast stations so that they couldn’t be used by many third-party devices or services.

Aereo TV is backed by Diller’s IAC digital media company, which also owns College Humor, Vimeo, Ask.com, and other notable web properties. The company led a $20.5 million round of funding for Aereo in 2011, according to the NYT report.

[Photo of Diller via Aereo's Instagram account]

Right now, content partners upload their videos to YouTube and take a cut of the revenue that’s brought in from the advertising. The partners currently have the option to restrict their videos from being played on certain platforms or mediums. For instance, producers could decide they only want their videos played on a regular web browser and iOS applications. Their videos wouldn’t be available on Google TV, Android, or mobile web browsers. This strategy might be employed if a content producer wants to negotiate a separate, more lucrative deal on another platform (for example, giving Microsoft exclusive TV and console rights to their content). According to AllThingsD, Google’s new terms don’t allow content producers to cut those side deals, which has the potential to take money out of their pocket.

These new terms are apparently not rolling out for larger content partners like Vevo, meaning Vevo can continue to restrict how and where its YouTube videos are viewed without interference by Google. Part of that has to do with the bigger content partners bringing videos that are far more influential than the average user can create. Right now they (the big content producers) have the clout to call their own shots, but it’s obviously something Google would like to abolish going forward rather than making it a commonplace.

Also, I doubt it’s Google’s intention to single out the smaller content partners. It’s far more user-friendly to make sure a web producer’s videos are available on all platforms and mediums. Personally, I find it aggravating when I try to share a video with someone from a “major” YouTube content partner via my iPhone, only to discover that it’s not available to mobile users. In those instances, I don’t bother trying to find another video, I simple put my phone away and find something else to do — a fact Google no doubt realizes.