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Source:CenterNetworks

This just in… the un-named online video venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal now has a name: Hulu. What is it with these "Hawaiian" sounding names? First Mahalo for a search engine and now hulu for a video service? From GoHawaii: Hulu, Hawaiian for “feather/plumage,” also means “choice and precious” and, at a symbolic level, stands for an esteemed kupuna (elder).

Hulu explains the name, "Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building." Seems to make me think of a hula hoop. One that goes round and round but never actually goes anywhere. It is a fun sounding name.

Details are just coming in but here is the release:

Los Angeles, California — Aug. 29, 2007 — News Corp. and NBC Universal today announced that "Hulu" is the official name of their online video joint venture and that the private beta will be available in October.

Starting today, interested users can submit their email address at hulu.com to be included in an invite list for the private beta.  The Hulu beta is expected to be open to a limited number of users and continue to grow as the Hulu development team continues to scale the site and address user feedback.

Visit http://hulu.com and click on the "Find out more" link to read a message from the CEO, Jason Kilar. Ongoing details and updates about Hulu will also be made available on http://hulu.com.

Update: Om has some good additional details on the name on NewTeeVee.

Source:CenterNetworks

Zoho has launched a new start page/integrated console which they call Zoho Start. Zoho Start allows you to bring together all of the Zoho applications together into one snapshot view. The Zoho Start page currently works with Zoho Show, Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet and they are working towards making all Zoho applications available.

The official feature set includes:

• Users can now login to a common page from www.zoho.com directly without having to go to individual application login pages.
• 'My Documents' section integrates Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show
• Folder Management - Ability to segregate documents into folders
• A common user interface to Share, Tag, Export documents
• 'Zoho Apps' tab (on the right) helps you navigate to other Zoho Apps you have access to.
• 'My Contacts' section integrates your contacts (from Zoho Chat)

My suggestion for the Zoho team is to look at creating a full start page. Add the ability to add feeds and other content (similar to Pageflakes, maybe an integration option there!) and then users of Zoho would have no reason to go elsewhere. This could increase the top of mind awareness for Zoho as the user would be on a Zoho property for an extended period of time.

Editor's note: Zoho is a current CN sponsor.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 3:54 pm and is filed under zoho, Reviews, Zoho Start. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.