Hulu and Boxee are currently embroiled in a cat and mouse game of workaround followed by a fix that is likely to rumble on until the lawyers get involved. Surely common sense should prevail and Hulu should realize it is being unnecessarily harsh.

Boxee

Boxee is a free, open-source piece of software that allows PC users to access all their Web video from one central location. On top of this, it operates as a cross-platform media center that allows online video lovers to watch their favorite content on their televisions rather than their computers.

Boxee is still a work in progress but has become increasingly popular amongst people who want one solution that will enable them to watch a number of sources using one application. Mac and Linux versions of the software are now in open alpha, while a new Windows version is in closed beta.

Boxee offers a range of different content sources, from Apple movie trailers, YouTube, Blip.tv, CNN, CBS, MySpaceTV, Netflix, Revision3, MTV, Joost, and the BBC iPlayer. And until the middle of February, Hulu was also on that list.

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There’s a trend at present to offer people the opportunity to create their own version of popular Web destinations. You can create your own social network, fully customizable blogs, and anything else you set your heart on. And online video has now joined the throng.

Fliggo Opens Its Doors

Fliggo is a new start-up that has been in private beta for a while, but is now open to the great unwashed or you and I. In a nutshell, it allows anyone to create their own video-sharing site, be it a YouTube clone, a blog, or a private place to share.

Fliggo tries to make the whole process of creating and running a video-sharing site as easy as humanly possible, and it manages to do exactly that. All of the technical side is done for you with a set of easy-to-use management tools enabling some degree of customization.

Options, Options, Options

The site you create using Fliggo can be private or public, and cater to your own personal whims. Are you a group of people which wants to share videos amongst yourself? Are you a company that wants an easy way of sharing videos with its employees? Are you an individual who wants to run a video blog but lacks the necessary resources and technical know-how? Fliggo caters to all of these needs and more besides.

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Have you ever thought text is becoming a thing of the past? Videos are becoming such a normality on the Internet, that the written word just doesn’t do it any more.

So, to that end, Seesmic, a video micro-blogging application for the Web, is now available as a Wordpress plugin, which will instantly make it available to millions of new users.

What the new Seesmic plugin offers is the chance for bloggers and writers on websites to easily record videos for their posts, as well as the opportunity for readers to comment using video rather than text.

After months of speculation and testing, Google have finally made it official and recently announced the launch of “Video Units”.

This is a new video-based advertising format that matches the breadth of consumable video content of YouTube with the huge Google AdWords advertising inventory.

Online publishers and independent video producers can rejoice as they gain another method of making money online, and it’s easy to use too.

The new Google Video Units are a new monetization option immediately available to AdSense publishers located in North America and with a web site in English. The Video Units configuration and activation can be accessed inside the AdSense Setup tab within your AdSense account.

As an online publisher you can customize the look and feel of the “video units” and select specific video content by letting Google match your page content, by keywords and categories you can select or even by specific YouTube authors.

The new “video units” ad player features the ability for the viewer to scroll and browse through several video clips as well as to move through different ads just like Google allows you to do inside your Gmail inbox.

The ads can be displayed both above and below the video and their format includes both text as well as full graphic banners.

Wordpress has slowly but surely become the standard blogging platform on the Internet, with seemingly everyone and their mother being able to use the simple and intuitive interface.

Video bloggers haven’t been ignored either, as Wordpress has quite a few solutions for that style of posting if you are willing to dig around a bit.

Revver’s recent foray into WP plugins covers pretty much everything you might need to get started. The latest instalment of the Tubetorial 7 Must Have Killer Plugins For Wordpress series covers getting this installed and what it can do for you.

I’m a huge fan of Boing Boing, the gadgets and wonderful things blog, so I was as excited as anyone at the thought of Boing Boing TV. So I must admit to being slightly disappointed int eh first episode to say the least. 

Despite the mild and in some places sycophantic praise being bandied around, in my opinion the first episode royally sucked.

Why?

For me, Rocketboom has long been the Boing Boing of Internet TV/Web Video/call it what you will. And Rocketboom has perfected the format, fine tuning it to a veritable art form. 

In comparison, Boing Boing TV feels like a weak latecomer to the game. It’s a shame the partnership between the two never came off.

BudTV has got a reprieve, and I must admit that on first reading about it being saved from the ashes, and having its lease extended to next year, my first response was: Why?

The site, an attempt to create a Funny or Die-style comedy video destination, was so painfully lame — despite the estimated $20-million that went into setting it up and getting various artists to create content for it.

For this reason, I thought it would be better to euthanize it, and put it out of its (and our) misery.

That was my first reaction. But Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee has managed to convince me that BudTV should live on to fight another day.