I gave Hulu.com a quick test run this weekend and I must admit, it’s pretty awesome and addictive! (the hilarious SNL Natalie Portman rapping video above) Sure there’s Joost, Veoh, Miro, Youtube, DailyMotion, and direct online streams from ABC, NBC, FOX, and several other networks, but hey, besides appearing like a lowercase web2.0 Hulk logo at first, it’s pretty clean, simple, and fun. They even have HD streams! One nice Hulu feature is embedding videos or even sections in a video, though you can’t embed a playlist of videos yet.

Hulu does have a few short commercials throughout their streams, but thus far it hasn’t distracted me much. I’ve only had one brief pause in a video unlike my horrible Joost experience, but maybe that’ll change once Hulu gets out of Beta in late March.

Anywy, I’ve embedded a few videos from Chef Gordon Ramsey’s feisty reality show “Kitchen Nightmares” which I’ve found very entertaining and a nice kick in the butt to fix your business and get rid of the lazy ones. He really shouts the crap outta you to be successful and make change!

Also, I’ll add a few movies! (Sideways, October Sky, Weekend at Bernie’s)

Videos after the jump (meaning, after you click “read the rest of the story”)

Hulu.com(I’ll have a more in depth review down the road)

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This has been an odd week, of rescheduling then un-scheduling, hence, busy for no reason in the end. Makes you really appreciate people with concrete answers, directions, over the ones that can’t make decisions.

Tech: Building the perfect laptop(Lenovo x300). Great read on the process and obstacles.
Odd: Expensive High Heels without the heel!
Neat: How to be unidentified by a camera using an invisible light.
Cool: Self-Healing Rubber…Kind of like Silly Putty.
Music: FiddleFoxx…a fast paced fiddle crew with a beat boxer!
Video: How people from different nations count cash. How do you count your cash?
Fashion: Project Runways fashion walks during Fashion Week.
Nature: One crazy swimming pool location over Victoria Falls, with video.
Art: One HUGE panoramic image of London.
Music Video: Making music from 2 iphone and one DS.

“SpeakLike, the first instant messaging(IM) service for accurate, real-time translation chat across different languages. You type text in your language, and others see it in theirs. ”

Very cool idea…though they are using real people for now to accurately translate in real-time. I’m sure computers will accurately do this down the road, otherwise, those real-time phone translators we all saw in those AT&T commercials in the 90′s should be coming soon.. I’ve seen a few in action.

FYI: Blahblahfish is a pretty hilarious site that translates English to another language and back again for some rather messed up sentences.

via Springwise
SpeakLike

Neato…Yahoo has an animated Newsglobe for your lobby waiting entertainment. Reminds me a bunch of the Wii News globe which rocks, but then again, it’s the Wii. It would be nice if Google Earth had a dynamic plugin like this as a filter option. Otherwise, I guess I might use it as a screen saver for the time being.

Yahoo NewsGlobe.

Neatorama’s got a great historical collection of tech company logos transforming, evolving, and even name changing over the years. It’s amazing to think about how some giant companies started, and how they adapted to nice design! Makes me wonder when it’s time to make a name change over a logo transformation…(there are many brands that I think suffer based on their crappy names)

A bunch of pics after the jump. (more…)

Watch this incredible documentary about the unexplained phenomenon and mystery of cold, the creation of thermometers, ice farming, artificial ice, the creation of the AC, finding absolute zero, and many other fascinating facts about everything cold. It’s amazing to hear how inventions are started! I can’t imagine living without cold anymore..did you know cold was considered evil before.

Watch it all on Nova’s website, or on the many(12) YouTube videos after the jump.
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Odd: Sonic Boiling, boiling water through sound!
Sculpture: a whistling sculpture. very mysterious.
Neat: hermit crab in a glass shell
Design: the egg chair comes in chocolate!!!
Neat: world class packer for art. very interesting!
Art: Obey Giant makes awesome Obama Poster!
Cool: museum makes solar plastic bag float(above)
BUY: TED ticket on ebay!!(it’s legit, sponsored by TED, and proceeds go to charity. Bids are up to 34k, and auctions ends Monday)
Art: Troika cloud sculpture.
Fashion: a very bizarre fashion show in paris
Funny video: Improv Everywhere pulls off a frozen in time stunt in Grand Central!
Brand: Generation of Why-ers!(gen “Why”)

“On Wednesday, January 30, fashionistas and techies will unite at SEAMLESS: computational couture, a fashion show and celebration that fuses cutting-edge style with the latest advances in technology. At this evening event that kicks off at 8 p.m., the Museum of Science exhibit halls will be transformed into a catwalk for “computational couture,” showcasing 20 selected, emerging designer teams from around the globe and creations that push the boundaries of wearable technology. Models wearing the interactive clothing will strut to live media performances by video artists sosolimited and DJs Eddie O and Mike Uzzi of Zero G Sounds.”

Above: Party Dress by Dana and Karla Karwas (New York):“Party Dress functions as a pavilion worn exclusively by five women that seamlessly injects architecture into fashion by using the body as space. The dress begins as a shared, bustled garment that gradually unfolds to create a temporary, inhabitable structure. Each seam, each dress, and each body are interconnected by a single, amorphous surface of flowing material.”

“With room for spectators beneath the fabric, Party Dress flirts with traditional concepts of public and private space while adding sparkling wit to the conversation between fashion and architecture. Party dress works across multiple scales and environments, unraveling conventional notions of space, materiality, and temporality.”

I’ll be covering the event so look out for more posts in the next few weeks. Otherwise if your in the Boston area, get your tickets here!($15)..oh, fyi, Project Runways Steven Rosengard, will be th MC.

2008 Seamless show info
Boston Science Museum Tickets<

For those of you into the fascinating world of materials comes and update to my list of favorite material books, Transmaterial 2. Author, architect, and material guru Blaine Brownell has published his second book which will be available in March this year…so go and order it cause I am!

Transmaterial 2
List of favorite material books.
Transmaterial blog

The pixelated “Icon Watch” that I posted about almost 2 years ago has found it’s way into production. Congrats. Buy it here! ($82ish)

update: MoMa Store picked it up, so you can buy it for $75.(I’m buying it next trip down)

Cool image above here.
Weekend thought: Why do corporations seem to work slower than smaller firms. More people= more help, or more people= more hassle?

- Fun: Wall closet: Throw your cloths on a wall of hooks!
- Fun video: Another great home made Daft Punk video.
- Odd: a man’s skin turns Blue!
- Video Hack: Unlock a car door with a tennis ball.
- Site: iKlimt, A great site dedicated to one of my artist, Gustav Klimt.
- Apple: the very blogged about Apple Air notebook. I’m kind of disappointed, but very impressed with the risk taken. Gizmodo discussions.

“VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video – models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modeled over one or more frames of the video.”

Pretty neat! For someone not experienced in 3D modeling, this is a great alternative. Reminds me of SketchUp to some degree, which is cool since you can add your models into Google Earth…Otherwise, I like how VideoTrace generates a 3 dimensional model based on a trace from a video, though I’m still not exactly sure how the software pinpoint hat angle you are at.

Video Trace site with video.
VideoTrace on Youtube video.