disney

Hulu eyeing half a billion in sales this year

Hulu is forecasting sales of close to half a billion dollars and more than a million Hulu Plus subscribers this year.

In a blog posted yesterday, CEO Jason Kilar marked the end of the first quarter with some notable figures and projections about the company's recent past and upcoming future.

The forecast of almost $500 million in sales for the year follows the first quarter in which revenue shot up around 90 percent compared with last year's initial quarter, according to Kilar. For 2010 as a whole, Hulu took in sales of $263 million.

Touting the expected rise … Read more

The 404 785: Where it's our so-called MemeMolly (podcast)

The 404 Digest for Episode 785

Our guest today is MemeMolly, who gives us an update on the latest memes, Internet culture, and why nobody can stand the word "viral." Add Molly on Twitter and follow her Tumblr.

Top Dog: one is tough, the other is a dog. Where are they now, featuring Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa Guy? Is Cathymay15 a troll, a genius, or another victim of online bullying? EU proposes right to be forgotten online.… Read more

Zynga, Disney embrace Web game technology

When it comes to the competition between Flash and Web technologies, the latter camp has two big new allies in the online gaming industry: Zynga and Disney.

Zynga today mostly uses Adobe Systems' Flash technology as a foundation for its widely played CityVille and FarmVille online games. But an acquisition of a German company last fall is paving the way for a new foundation using technology that uses a browser, not a browser plug-in.

Zynga joined the World Wide Web consortium this week and will share the fruits of its Web-based gaming experience, said Paul Bakaus, chief technology officer of … Read more

Google makes you a better chef

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Google launches Recipe View to help you whittle your ingredient lists

Disney purchases Togetherville, a social network for children

Google makes a small change to its algorithm to push "content farm" links farther down in search results

Intel unveils its ThunderBolt data transfer technology, formerly code-named Light Peak

Angry Birds will fly on Windows Phone 7 in April

Bing extends Facebook's Like feature across its search results

Facebook breaks up with the Breakup Notifier app

Disney buys kids' social network Togetherville

The Walt Disney Company has just acquired Togetherville, a social-networking site aimed at 6- to 10-year-old children.

When I first wrote about Togetherville, just before it launched in May 2010, I was impressed because it was one of the few sites aimed at preteens that shared Facebook's idea of a "real-name culture." The site requires children and their adult family members to say who they are. Unlike another Disney online children's property, Club Penguin, it's not about avatars and virtual worlds but about the child's real identity. The site lets kids connect with their … Read more

If Hulu loses CEO, who would want that gig?

Toast.

That's what Jason Kilar's career at Hulu is supposed to be soon if all the media speculation is correct.

Hulu is controlled by broadcast networks, NBC, ABC, and Fox, but that didn't stop Kilar, Hulu's CEO, from writing in a blog post Wednesday that TV is cluttered with too many ads and he predicted that prices and profit margins for the TV sector would decline. He even lamented the tendency of "incumbents" (read: TV execs) to fight change. Much of his post was about what Hulu needed to offer consumers if it is … Read more

Report: Hulu in danger of losing more content

Hulu's owners are bickering among themselves and the company's management over how much free content the online video service should offer, according to a published report.

The dispute is over how much Hulu's ad-supported service is competing with traditional TV broadcasts, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hulu is owned by three media conglomerates that operate their own broadcast networks: Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), and NBC Universal.

Fox and ABC have considered pulling from the service some of their content offered to Hulu users free of charge, the Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. In what may … Read more

Report: Disney lays off half its game staff

Walt Disney has laid off hundreds of people in its game development division as it transitions from console content to more casual gaming, according to CNBC.

Citing an unnamed source, CNBC reported that Disney may have eliminated up to 350 of the 700 jobs in the company's game development office.

However, a source close to Disney told CNET today that the layoffs are not nearly as steep as CNBC is reporting.

The news is all the more surprising when one considers that Disney launched the popular Epic Mickey on the Nintendo Wii less than two months ago. The release … Read more

Disney wishes upon an Android phone

Usually when we refer to something as a Mickey Mouse phone, we're not being generous. Today is different. Disney. Japan. Android. Smartphone. Boom--four of our favorite things, coming together like two dogs hoovering up a piece of spaghetti, as Disney stamps its distinctively eared brand on an Android phone.

The Disneyphone will run version 2.2 of Google's mobile operating system, Android. Sadly it's only available in Japan--yet another reason why the Japanese are just so much better than us.

Read more of "Android is a wish your heart makes as Disney launches smart phone in Japan&… Read more

'Tron: Legacy' review--go for the fun, not the plot

movie review It's hard to judge "Tron: Legacy" in a vacuum, as most will naturally look to the original 1982 film for comparison.

That said, even if you've never seen the original, you can still enjoy the new movie. There are enough flashbacks and explanations that you won't miss out on much. But that doesn't mean it doesn't draw a steady stream of influence from the original, with nods peppered throughout to keep fans happy.

I won't explain the whole plot here, but in general, it's as much a reboot as it is a sequel. Kevin Flynn, played perfectly by Jeff Bridges--who sometimes seems to channel The Dude from "The Big Lebowski"--disappeared 20-odd years ago. His son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), bitter about mysteriously losing the dad he loved, gets paged to Flynn's abandoned video arcade. There, he finds his dad's secret super-computer workshop and gets himself blasted into the world of Tron that Flynn had created.

This transition was a neat trick, and one I didn't anticipate. Watching the first 20 or so minutes of the film, I was disappointed at how the 3D looked. But then I realized it wasn't 3D, but regular 2D. The 3D, which looks spectacular, starts the moment Sam (and the viewers) enter the Tron world. It's a trick reminiscent of the black-and-white-to-color gimmick in "The Wizard of Oz." This is also where the Daft Punk score kicks in, and in some ways it's as much a character as anyone else in the film. There's been a lot of hype about it, and it's all legit.

Another highlight of the film, which opened nationwide at midnight last night: the requisite light bike scene, which is great. It very much resembles the gameplay I've seen in the "Tron" games coming to consoles and it made me want to play right there in the theater. … Read more