DanLin.net

A few days ago I posted a story about Hulu and how you can embed their videos in your own blog.

I also noticed one little thing that there were more videos available if you just change the numeric id in the embed code. That led me to create a page on Premity.com, a company I started with a couple of other dudes.

A couple of people noticed the page and we even got a call from Nat Worden of TheStreet.com inquiring about our (un)association with the video startup currently it private beta. Little did we know the phone call was an interview for a post on TheStreet.com and made us out to be hackers trying to use their service to garner free publicity.

In reality, this ‘hack’ is not much of a hack at all. Since Hulu allows embedding of their videos outside of their site, even beta testers need to be able to copy and paste the embed code to their destination of choice. That meant anyone who wanted to embed the code onto their blog was free to do so. It just so happens that the video IDs are in ascending numerical order so I just made a page that randomly picks a number out of all of their currently available videos and displays the next 4.

It really is a pretty simple implementation of what Hulu intended for their beta users to be able to do so I would not really consider this a compromise at all of their beta service.

But it is a free world, so say what you will…

A couple sites who noticed our page:
Hulu’s Code Quickly Cracked
Premity Hijacks Hulu
I want a beta invite to Hulu
Private Beta Not So Private: Ad-Free Hulu Clips Disseminated

You would think after 3 months of working on a debut episode of Mahalo Daily, they would have actually put something together that’s worth watching. Instead, all they were able to muster is a ‘trailer’ to the upcoming premiere. It is a really lame one at that. Completely lacks creativity and originality. After months of work, they resorted to making a parody video of some of the most popular video podcasts. It is a huge cop-out move to get cheap laughs. I’m not even gonna post any links to the video to spare you the torture. For the masochists out there, I’m sure you will have no problems Googling it yourself…

I am usually suspect of anyone who decides to clone digg.com with ‘their own spin’ but this one is actually pretty cool. It has a very nicely designed player that you can embed anywhere and nice social features albeit trendy and overrated.

Here is their embedded top song player which is a cool feature to discover new music. You can register, login and Jigg all directly within this embeddable player which will help them grow their userbase virally.

Although their embed link feature from the player currently is broken so I had to browse the page source to find this code. That could be a problem but should be an easy fix for them.

I just felt it a couple of minutes ago while sitting here at my desk.

That’s only about 40 miles from me and is a fairly densely populated area of Greater Los Angeles.

Schmaps is an online digital travel guide that leverages the community’s efforts in aggregating data. 2 of my photos on Flickr have been included in the past for their Tucson guide

Just today I was notified that my photo of the El Rey theater in Los Angeles has also been chosen for inclusion for the LA edition. Whats interesting is that my photo of the El Rey was taken by my camera phone. Not even a nice one, my old Motorola V600 camera phone. Take a look at this photo. If you are a member of the band Magna, you might be excited to see your name in lights…