Drudge says it’s ready to go, should be any time now…in the meantime here’s hoping they offer Seinfeld reruns.

UPDATE: hulu is now launched with a list of available content (no Seinfeld) and screenshots of the site and the Yahoo! TV syndication player. TechCrunch and NewTeeVee have more.

If anyone out there receives a beta invite let us know what you think.

Halloween is only a few days away and Needcoffee.com has been counting down thirty two days with classic horror films, posting them in their entirety at least until the MPAA takes notice.

Above: “The Thing” trailer - full version here.

R.L. Stein’s Goosebumps continue to be popular with kids, and while Scholastic doesn’t offer video online, the usual suspect video sites have plenty of episodes uploaded by users. Further proof that content producers need to make their content available online on their terms or others will.

Above: Goosebumps - The House Of No Return

And thanks to online video, viewers can now watch live as people tour some of the scariest places on earth. Every day from now until halloween, Yahoo! and FEARnet is providing live video tours of haunted houses in St Louis, Las Vegas and Portland and giving $50,000 to the user with video of the scariest haunted house.

Vote for me on Bix.com!

Above: Slickshill Cemetery of Horrors

LG, makers of plasma and LCD televisions, are launching a new user-generated video contest called “Life’s Good When…”, on a YouTube page created to host it.

Users are asked to submit short videos (15-30 seconds long) that express an experience, moment, feeling, or event that has made life good for them. There have been about 700,000 video views already, and there are nearly 600 submissions.

The goals of this branding initiative are awareness of the brand, engagement with the brand, and to enforce the brand as it relates to their philosophy “life’s good.”

Head on over and let us know what you think of the submissions, or go ahead and make one yourself. Hell, $18,000 is one large plasma!

YouTube is close to rolling out a new site layout and their blog is looking for feedback. They’ve gone red and they’ve channeled MSN. What is the obsession with the thumbnail grid?

Above: YouTube & MSN Video Side by Side

The biggest complaint most people seem to have with YouTube’s new look is the red, but that doesn’t bother me so much. What bothers me is the lack of innovation.

When MSN retooled their video site several months back, they introduced a similar grid format, with thumbnails of popular content and dropdown menu for sorting. Both Google and Microsoft have enough money to do better. Where are the design people?

The capability exists to create richer interfaces for displaying content. Aggregators like YouTube and MSN Video are only as strong as the medium they provide for displaying the video they host. A better interface can provide a huge competitive advantage.

Neither company has introduced anything truly innovative to their video portal in years. Right now they lead because they’re the largest aggregators with the greatest promotional reach.

But content is still king, if Google and MSN cannot keep up with companies that create richer user experiences or otherwise entice content producers with monetary compensation, producers will take their content to a place that makes their videos look better.

Pretty quiet on the online video front today. All eyes seem focused on the World Series, the Office Convention and hulu’s impending launch on Monday.

I’m Headed up to Boston for PodCamp this weekend. For anyone else traveling from New York I highly recommend the LimoLiner. Looking forward to some good discussions, my short list:

Saturday
10:30am The Bigger Better Deal of Podcasting with Chris Brogan and David Eckoff.
11:30am Legal and Logistical Advice for your Startup with Whitney Hoffman.
2:00pm Tools of the Social Media Trade with CC Chapman & Mitch Joel.
4:00pm Monetizing New Media with John Federico

Sunday
10:00am Internet TV and Internet Storytelling with Kfir Pravda.
11:00 am Social Networking 101 with Chris Penn.
1:00pm Is there a cure for Social Networking Fatigue syndrome? with Joe Cascio.

See you there. And while in Boston… look out for the Turkeys.

Who says the internet is dead and boring? Already CDNs like BitGravity are finding more efficient ways to deliver bandwidth intensive content, and today the Melbourne Herald Sun reports a Greek “whiz” received a Melbourne University prize for finding a way to boost bandwidth over copper by up to 200 times.

Dr John Papandriopoulos has filed patent applications for the technology which reportedly can get up to 250Mbps out of copper using “mathematic modelling to reduce the interference that slows down downloading.”

If true, it could provide an advantage for AT&T which has been rolling out its FTTN IPTV service, using copper as a more cost-effective last mile solution to the home. Verizon plans to spend $20 billion wiring individual homes with Fiber. In any event the technology is years away from implementation.

DSL Reports has more including a pretty good discussion in the comments but there’s not much out there on how it works, such is the nature of technology in the litigious society we live in.

Alas, Bill Gates flexes his muscles and wins the battle to throw millions of dollars at Facebook.

The AP is reporting that Microsoft will acquire a measly 1.6% of the booming social network for less than a quarter-billion dollars, a significantly smaller slice of the pie (and smaller bill) than the rumored $1.5 Billion for 10% that was tossed around yesterday.

“The opportunity to further collaborate as advertising partners is a big reason we have decided to take an equity stake, and is a strong statement of our confidence in the long-term economics of this partnership,” said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services division.

According the the press release, “Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States.”

On Aug. 22, 2006, the companies announced a U.S.-only strategic alliance that named Microsoft the exclusive provider of standard banner advertising on Facebook using Microsoft’s digital advertising solutions and the Microsoft(R) adCenter platform. That deal was later extended through 2011. However, Facebook’s most appealing feature is its open architecture, enabling anyone to develop widgets and other mini-apps to run on the site, including those which serve advertising. Could this be the dirty little secret limiting the size and scope of this deal? I’m all ears.

Industry watchers can now eagerly await the Nov. 6th meeting where Facebook will announce their new advertising products. Where that leaves ad-widget provider VideoEgg in the mix is anyone’s guess.

In case you were wondering who the creative forces behind the latest and greatest online ad campaigns, widgets, microsites and other video enabled web stuff were, AdAge’s Abbey Klaassen spotlights the top 20 independent creative shops.

In this week’s New Media Minute, Daisy Whitney looks at the numbers behind some of online video’s rising stars.

Will Farrell and Adam McKay are expanding their Funny or Die franchise with Shred or Die, an action sports video portal headlined by Tony Hawk. Or Die Networks plans to launch more sites in the coming months, through similar partnerships with celebrities and sports stars.

Shred or Die is focused on skating, surfing, BMX and motocross and offers a much more user-generated experience than competing extreme sports sites. Users can be browsed by popularity and activity level and Tony Hawk regularly updates his video picks for the best user-generated content.

The site also adds some enhanced features to the video player, such as slow-motion and frame-by-frame options, great for watching content which is meant to be slowed down.

While extreme sports are very popular in some circles they are often under-served by TV which makes them ideally suited for online video.

EXPN.com is the best known of the competition, focused on professional content, most of it surrounding ESPN’s X Games and Extreme.com offers a similar video portal consisting of clips from their UK based TV network.

Shred or Die could quickly become the new online home of extreme sports fans, but only time will tell if the combination of celebrity videos and user-generated content will be enough to drive a larger audience to these sites so they can be monetized.