Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation - GigaOM. nice summary of how they manage creativity and morale at pixar.

When Crowdsourcing Fails: Cambrian House Headed to the Deadpool. calgary based startup seems to be done.

Software as a Service Rails Kit. write code, not billing code.


Justin.tv - DHH Talk - Startup School 2008. great talk about creating a business that targets the Fortune 5 million.

Microsoft Acquires Farecast For $115M. local startup that basically stores a pile of flight info. damn.

jstn.cc : Muxtape, 24 hour mark “8,685 users / 19,731 songs / 35,000 visits / $118.17 on S3″. that’s gotta be getting expensive. via josh.

Zillow Disrupts Lending Market With Mortgage Marketplace. you create anonymous requests with basic info and get bids from brokers. no obligation to respond. also some interesting stats on zillow’s listings.

Redfin wins twice for customers. beyond saving the average buying $10K in commissions, they also got an extra $5K less, on average, than the asking price.

hulu

So I’ve been meaning to write-up some thoughts on hulu.com since I got a beta invite back in December. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC and FOX to create a legal online video hub for their content. The main draw of the site is the content. Every show that’s currently on NBC and FOX is regularly updated on hulu. They also have a solid back catalog which including every episode of Arrested Development and a couple seasons of the A-Team. Their also added new content almost every day. The video quality is quite good (fullscreen on my macbook looks fine) and download speeds have been awesome (I’ve only had buffering issues once or twice since december).

The site is nice and clean and has a couple features that I’ve really grown to like. If you close your browser while watching an episode, when you return to that episode it’ll re-queue it 10 seconds before you left last time. I’ve even got into a few shows via hulu which I wouldn’t have watched otherwise (30 Rock and Burn Notice come to mind). It seems the biggest problem with the site is that it’s only available in the US (which will probably drive me nuts soon enough).

Anyways, hulu is no longer in beta and anyone can use it (that is, anyone in the US). I highly recommend checking it out.

Team WhiteBoarding with Twiddla - Painless Team Collaboration for the Web. i’m amazed you can do all that with just ajax.

Kluster: Crowdsourcing platform. jody tried to pitch me this business idea a while back.

AOL Buys Bebo For $850 Million. this wasn’t even news. dang.

Dropbox - Screencast. very cool demo for an online backup & sync tool that’s really well integrated with macos and windows.

Scribd Steps Up Its Game With iPaper. new flash based pdf viewer. looks nice.

Five whys - Joel on Software. a good post on how to deal when shit happens.

VeloCity Residence at Waterloo. an incubator residence for startups focusing on mobile communications, web, and new media.

EveryBlock. local city info. nice looking site with a crazy amount of data. only for chicago, nyc, and san francisco. You can select your street block, for example, and see related actions nearby. pretty cool.

12 Learnings From My First Turn As Startup CEO - socialmedian. from the guy who started jobster (here in seattle).

Stealth Job Site NotchUp Makes Companies Pay To Interview You. that’s right, pay you to interview with them. google and facebook are on the private beta.

Babbel: Help Me, Help You Learn A New Language. techcrunch review on a web startup for learning languages. looks interesting.