Hulu + Adobe AIR = awesome

One of my latest online fixations has been smash-hit video site Hulu.com, a joint venture between some of the biggest media players in the industry. If you are willing to put up with the occasional bout of advertising, you can watch a whole ton of really good movies and TV shows, for free, on your own schedule.

Originally dubbed “clown co” by Mike Arrington and some other tech-snobs, Hulu turned out to a be a well-greased, nicely designed, enjoyable site. I often leave it playing it the background while I’m working if I don’t feel like listening to music.

Another development I’ve been keeping my eye on is Adobe’s AIR platform. Similar to Flash, it provides you with a consolidated platform where you can write applications which will run seamlessly across the big OS’s (mac, win, linux). The beautiful part is that the applications are written using languages a little more friendly than Action Script and far less painful than using the bloated Flash authoring program. These applications run on HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Both Snitter and Twhirl (twitter clients) run on AIR, along with AOL’s video player, and as of today, this really cool stand alone Hulu app called “My Media Player.”

Similar to a dedicated browser like MailPlane, this application will only load Hulu’s content, but it actually re-organizes the shows and movies in alphabetical order. While overall I’m a big fan of Hulu’s user interface, I’ve often found it difficult to get to a video I’m interested while sifting through the hours of other footage they have (it’s a HUGE library). Also annoying about Hulu is that it will tease you with a clip from the show rather than the whole thing. My Media Player gives you a scalable window filled with thumbnails for all the shows and their episodes. It also makes it easy to not accidentally close the window as you browse because it is in it’s own dedicated space.

I tried it while at work today and found it to be terrific. The creator is a very conscientious designer who took the whole community into account while making it. I highly recommend that you read the research and thought that went into this program.

If I had to gripe about something (as I am prone to do), I will say that while AIR has made great strides in making it very easy to keep your programs up to date (it does it automatically and in the background), they have brought over a very annoying “windows” feature into my Mac world. When you click to “install” an AIR app, a window pops up asking if you want to open or save the file. Logic would say that you want to “save” the file so that you can run it again later. Unfortunately, this is just a compiled installer which you never see again. After hitting save or open, you will then be asked about saving the “real” application. This is redundant and stupid, Adobe.