A Charlie Brown Christmas on Hulu — Apparently there is a "War on Charlie Brown Christmas Specials!" Last week, President Obama's speech on Afghanistan bumped A Charlie Brown Christmas from CBS' scheduling, which some people thought was a kind of conspiracy. Anyway, this holiday classic featuring that charming, round-headed boy was recently added to Hulu, so parents need not worry about the kiddies missing out this year. It's only available  until Jan. 1, 2010 so get in your movie night before the New Year.

The Future of New York on Big Think — What will New York look like in 10, 25, or even 50 years? The city in constant reinvention is examined by experts for Big Think's "The Future of New York City" video series. Deputy Mayor Bob Lieber, novelist Paul Auster, an environmental activist, and more offer up some predictions, explaining how New York will become more "green" and warning that its reliance on Wall Street could turn us into Detroit.

The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009 —Wondering how to make your little YouTube upload an online hit? You might want to check out some of these brilliant viral videos assembled at Mashable. Our favorites include this one for Volkswagen that encouraged people to take the stairs instead of the escalator, and another featuring a baby dancing to a Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," that pumps ad revenue and donations into his college fund. Brilliant.

BBC's Pedigree Dogs Exposed — This heartbreaking, controversial documentary caused a national upset in Britain when it was originally aired last summer. The hour-long film explores, as one expert put it, how we are breeding pedigreed dogs "to death." "Dogs are falling apart," one expert said. "The number of genetic problems are increasing at a frightening pace." BBC refused to air coverage of the annual Crufts dog competition (the U.K. equivalent of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show), according to the Guardian. Although Ofcom, the communications watchdog agency in the U.K., claimed that the documentary did not give the Kennel Club adequate opportunity to respond to the allegations in the film, the documentary forced the Kennel Club to change many of its policies to ensure better canine health (here's a list of some of the changes). The documentary is going to premiere in the States tonight on BBC America at 8 p.m., but you can watch it on MySpace now (not for the faint of heart).

Open Season on Native American sexual assault survivors — More than one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetime, according to Amnesty International. Open Season is a shorter version of a full-length documentary that explores women survivors of systematic sexual assault; it includes interviews with experts, advocates and the women themselves. Some experts in the film argue that U.S. law enforcement has failed to protect these women or to prosecute their assailants. The film was created by Raquel Chapa, an N.Y.U. graduate and art and film curator who worked on an art show titled Native Voice, which opened in Brooklyn in the spring of 2008. She has also worked in Indigenous Collections at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Acknowledgment and support of her short film will be paid to organizations, communities and leaders that are working to end sexual violence against Native women.

He gave a speech-one he has made over and over again to publishers-about how Google helps the beleaguering news business. Google News sends publishers about one billion clicks per month. Google AdSense served up more than $5 billion in revenue for Web publishers last year. YouTube, Google Maps and the search engine itself are daily resources for journalists and TV broadcast-ers.

Despite all this, Google has been branded by some publishers as Enemy No. 1 in the battle over content-who owns it and who profits from it.

At the forefront of that campaign, in recent months at least, has been News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, who also appeared at the workshop. In Washington, he gave a short speech offering three survival tactics for news organizations: innovation, fewer government regulation roadblocks and, of course, convincing users that "high-quality content cannot come free." (Message to you, Google!)

In fact, Mr. Murdoch has been on a tear against Google, threatening to pull News Corp. content from its indexes. At one point he was rumored to be discussing a content deal with the search en-gine's top competitor: Microsoft's Bing.

Yet Mr. Cohen insists that Google News' relationship with News Corp and other publishers is good-great even. Although he hasn't actually spoken to Mr. Murdoch himself.

"I certainly haven't heard specifically from Rupert Murdoch-he's above my pay grade," Mr. Cohen said in an interview with The Observer at Google's New York office.

Mr. Cohen isn't a headline-grabbing media executive like Mr. Murdoch or Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who recently published (in The Wall Street Journal, no less) a kind of rebuttal to Mr. Murdoch's complaints. Rather, he's the behind-the-scenes Google News guy, working from his office in Google's Chelsea outpost and sitting in fairly staid meetings with business representa-tives and editors from heavy hitters like The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and The New York Times, explaining how Google News' secret sauce of an algorithm works-why one story might get promoted over another based on its source, traffic numbers or the time it was posted, and how else the service might increase their ad revenue.

He does have an opinion about the controversy between Google and various publishers.

Mr. Cohen says it's mostly a media concoction that "makes for a good story."

MR. COHEN, a mild-mannered 40-year-old who was raised in New York (a Fieldston grad!) and currently lives on the Upper West Side, used to be on the other side of the debate. He was vice president of business development at Reuters Media and was responsible for partnership agreements with AOL, Google, MSN, Yahoo! and others. Before joining Reuters in 2004, he was di-rector of business development for SmartMoney.com, where he led strategic partnerships and licensing activities for the joint venture between Dow Jones and Hearst.

He joined Google in April 2007 and was charged with keeping publishers happy. He answers daily emails about Google News from publishers' sales departments, editors and policy makers; helps broker content-licensing deals; and listens to gripes and searches for solutions with engineers. He spends most of his time far from the heated arguments over Google News that are hashed out on media blogs, and explaining to reporters, publishers and Google's own managers exactly how Google News could be one among many solutions to the media's business problems.

"The vast, vast majority of publishers recognize that we're a real partner in these challenges," he told The Observer. Mr. Cohen said he is one of many Google executive who have daily conversations with publishers--from newspapers and magazines to modern digital media sites--on how to increase traffic, keep users engaged and bring in revenue by using Google platforms. In his view, Google News is a friendly pal giving a leg up to news outlets.

Mr. Cohen explained recent changes to Google News that he said were "not pegged to specific events" (like, say, Mr. Murdoch's public bashings of his company) but were based on discussions with many publishers over the past several months.

One change allows publishers to wield more control over their content on Google. Previously, Google News allowed publishers to insert a line of code in the back end of their Web sites to block Google's robots from crawling their content. Now publishers can instruct Google crawlers on what they can and cannot grab and index. "Want to block images from Google News, but not from Web Search? Go ahead," Mr. Cohen wrote last week on Google News' official blog. "Want to include snippets in Google News, but not in Web Search? Feel free."

Another feature updated Google News' "First Click Free" service. For publishers who have a paywall (like The Journal), a Google News user is allowed to click on one article per day and read it for free. Once she clicked on other pages, though, she's faced with a registration or paywall window. First Click Free allowed publishers to get much needed traffic from Googlers searching for news. Meanwhile, users could read an entire article for free before having to register for anything

But there was a loophole in First Click Free that had some publishers in an uproar. Some users could read as many articles as they wanted by finding an article's headline in Google News, search-ing for the headline's text in Google and clicking through to find the full text of the piece. Clever kids had unlimited access to paywall sites without having to spend a dime.

Now, Google News closed that loophole. Publishers can also opt in to a kind of "Up to Five Clicks Free" service. This gives publishers a little more time to woo users into sticking around and signing up for a subscription.

"You can put up a paywall and still have your content discovered within Google-it's not an either/or proposition," Mr. Cohen told The Observer. He speaks in well-rehearsed sentences that he has clearly repeated ad nauseam. "It's not a question of ‘all things need to be free.' There's not a philosophy that that's what needs to happen," he added.

SOME PUBLISHERS MIGHT be resentful that Google has so much control over where readers roam on the Web. And Google knows it must play nice with publishers to keep content flowing into their index. Yet both understand that the relationship, if symbiotic, is sometimes uncomfortable. They need each other because so many of us rely on Google to navigate the world.

Still, Mr. Cohen said he is more concerned with innovating news than with saving print products anchored by traditional business models. "We need to have high-quality information for our us-ers, and they need to be able to find it-nobody questions that," Mr. Cohen said. But he insists that some newspapers are still seeing news in a print frame of mind, and that it's not Google's job to sustain newspapers in their print-media prison.

Which explains why Google News is working with publishers to experiment in the modern media world.

On Sept. 14, Google partnered with three dozen publishers, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon.com and ProPublica, and launched a digital content browsing platform called Fast Flip. The service allows users to eyeball bundles of recent news, headlines and feeds from top publishers, who provide screen shots and graphics of their articles. Users get a preview of the article through Fast Flip and can click on links to go directly to the publisher's site. Fast Flip also aims to personalize the experience by showing users more content from sources, topics and journalists that they might like.

Google is sharing ad revenue with publishers who are on the service, which is a new model for Google. Still, Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times' senior vice president of digital operations, told PaidContent in September that "there's no grand plan here, nothing more to this other than learning," he said. "They're sharing revenue in a way they've never done before. That's positive. But the driver behind our participation isn't financial at this point."

And on Dec. 8, Google launched Living Stories, a new experiment in partnership with The Washington Post and The New York Times that allows users to view comprehensive coverage of an ongoing story gathered together on a single, dynamic page. Users who want to read about health care in The Times or fixing D.C.'s schools in The Post can now view breaking news, opinion pieces, photos, videos, multimedia content, and timelines on each story at a static URL.

Google is also working on creating a micropayment system and other technologies built off its Google Checkout product for publishers.

Still, Mr. Cohen is the first to admit that Google, despite extending its myriad efforts, won't provide all the solutions publishers are looking for as a way out of the current crisis.

"There are a number of factors of why newspapers are facing these issues today," he said. "I mean, pick any one, whether it's declining circulation rates, migration of classified ads, we could spend a half an hour. There's no one single solution, as in there's no one single cause for it."

Tell it to Mr. Murdoch.

greagan@observer.com

Follow the Observer on Twitter! 

More on Google from Gillian Reagan:

Google to Newspapers: Think We're Stealing from You? Fine, Don't Show Up in Searches

Google Books' Wacky Magazine Archives

What's Worth Downloading on Google Books?

As the Observer reported in November, the company will prepare digital versions of magazines that can work on multiple platforms, from the iPhone to the BlackBerry to digital devices that don't even exist yet.

Mr. Squires, an executive vice president at Time Inc., is planning to leave Time Inc. and become the managing director of the new company while the group will searches for a permanent executive.

What will this digital magazine store look like?

In an interview this morning, Mr. Squires said the format will be a "highly functioning, beautiful reading application similar to what you saw for Sports Illustrated or Wired." That means colorful, interactive digital magazines that can be updated in real time and personalized for individual users and advertisers. "We're going to enable that kind of product experience or reading experience across as many publications as possible," he told the Observer.

Mr. Squires said he is in talks even more media companies to join the venture, but didn't name names just yet.

Mr. Squires said he plans to work closely with advertisers to develop new immersive experiences on these digital magazines. "We have the potential to create a new and vastly important branding medium for advertisers in a way that has never been done before," he said. Signing on some ad sponsors for launch will be one of the company's major focuses during the next year.

As far as the iTunes-like digital storefront, Mr. Squires has a tagline to describe it: "easy access, easy purchase, easy download." He wants users to get universal access to their digital purchase on any device they like.

Mr. Squires wasn't able to give specifics on what kind of pricing or bundled packages the store will offer, "We've got a lot of work to do, we're really just getting going," he said.

Well, what if users want to be able to get, say, a subscription to digital magazine and the print magazine, as well as the publication's paywalled Web site, all in one purchase? It certainly won't be a universal pricing system, like Apple iTunes' original $.99 per song standard.

"It's hard to imagine how the Wall Street Journal will be the same price as This Old House," Mr. Squires told the Observer. "Clearly, that's going to be up to the publishers--setting their own pricing."

He said the company will work with start-ups and partnering companies' digital departments to build the technology.

"We're going to need as many resources as we can get," he said. "Building this middleware and this platform will be technically challenging. There's a lot of work to be done to get it right and big enough to work with companies at this scale, with very very large circulation products."

He said the company will also have to work closely with hardware companies to make sure they're building the right product for the platform. "We have to work in close coordination with the hardware companies," he said.

Are they working with Apple?

"We all call, we don't get a lot of return calls," Mr. Squires said.

Users will be able to swipe across the screen to flip pages as though it's a print product. They can also create their own version of the magazine, by arranging sections and stories in their preferred order. Along with the magazine articles, there's video, bonus photo shoot shots, live sports scores and stats from favorite teams and athletes (useful for the fantasy football types!). There's also game alerts, betting games, social networking capabilities and more.

Sports Illustrated worked with David Link, the founder of Wonderfactory, to help design the product. He told The New York Times that he was not sure whether the new digital magazine would be distributed through iTunes or other e-commerce stores. But he's certainly ready for an Apple tablet, if it ever comes out (a bunch of other publishers are too!). Certainly, the iTunes-like store that John Squires of Time Inc., Hearst and Conde Nast have in mind, and is expected to be revealed early next week, will be in the running. There's also news that Hearst is working on another mag platform called Skiff, which will allow them to sell digital versions of newspapers and magazines on e-readers and other mobile devices, according to today's Wall Street Journal.

But it remains to be seen whether ad revenue and charging for these tablet mags will be successful. Perhaps numbers from GQ's iPhone app sales, slapped with a $2.99 per issue price, will be an indictation. It was just released in stores on Nov. 25.

Taxi Driver on Hulu — Taxi Driver needs no introduction. Put one of Martin Scorsese's best in your Hulu queue for one of those dark, wintery nights.

21 Jump Street on Hulu — If you're looking for something a little lighter, there's three seasons of baby-faced Johnny Depp and a gaggle of young rookies playing undercover cops at high schools and sometimes colleges to fight crime. Look for bonus cameos from Brad Pitt, Christina Applegate, Vince Vaughn, Rosie Perez, Jason Priestley, Josh Brolin, Blair Underwood and more!

Path Lights — Path Lights, based on Tom Drury's 2005 New Yorker short story, is a plucky, thoughtful film that remixes the classic detective hero movie. John Hawkes (of Eastbound & Down and Me and You and Everyone We Know fame) plays Bobby, a guy who does voiceovers for an audio detective series. When a beer bottle falls from the sky, just missing his noggin, he decides to find out where it came from. David Lynch Foundation Television is hosting the 22-minute film for one week only, Dec. 2 through Dec. 9, before it makes the film festival rounds in 2010.

Can you throw a no-hitter on LSD? Dock Ellis did — As our sister from the same mister newsletter Very Short List points out, in 1970 "one major leaguer threw a no-hitter while high on acid and Benzedrine." Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No is the hilarious animated short that tells this truly incredible tale. Check it out.

Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized — The Decemberists, that twee band that sometimes makes good, poppy rock music, just released a full-length "video album" called Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized. It's available on iTunes and it's the first of this new breed of digital art for Apple's retailer. Four filmmakers—Peter Sluszka, Julia Pott, Guilherme Marcondes and Santa Maria—created original animated shorts with a section of the album as the soundtrack. Check out the official trailer.

Here's a peek inside some of the Times' most popular blogs, as offered by the editors:

Wendell Jamieson, deputy metropolitan editor for the Web who oversees City Room, the blog about New York for New Yorkers:

"Blog is a funny word to describe it, right?" Mr. Jamieson told the Observer. "It's really just a daily news report. We use the word 'blog' for lack of another term."

City Room debuted in June 2007 to provide breaking news, feature articles and reader conversations. Some of its reports include emergency landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River; M.T.A. fare hikes; popular baby names; bicycle racks; the history of Jewish delis; and the city's dog-scooping law.

Sewell Chan, City Room's bureau chief, wrote in his recent Talk to the Newsroom feature, that "[t]he tone of a blog post might often seem more conversational and less comprehensive than most traditional news articles, but we don't put anything on the blog that we would not be comfortable seeing in print. (Admittedly, we have experimented with first-person accounts, contests and even poetry.) We do avoid the opinion and mean-spirited snark associated with some blogs; snark isn't our thing."

But if City Room has one of the most unique voices among NYTimes.com blogs--it's one editors hope readers want to hear.

"City Room allows you to be very parochial in your coverage of New York City," Mr. Jamieson said. "We believe in covering New York for New Yorkers and going deep on things that only a New Yorker would really be fascinated by." Like, say, studies on architecture or neon signs with burned-out letters that "take on new (and unintended) meanings." "We do all sorts of stunt-type things," said Mr. Jamieson, like asking readers to get in on the rivalry between Montreal bagels and New York bagels.

Mr. Jamieson said City Room will be rolling out new columns and features in January, although he wouldn't go into detail. "We'll leverage metropolitan staff's deep knowledge of New York City institutions," is all he'd say.

As far as other fancy multi-media type stuff, Mr. Jamieson isn't concerned about keeping up with the latest blog gadgets. "Look, it's good stories--whether they're read the on the computer or a good newspaper. No matter how many slideshows you do, who cares? It has to be a good story, a strong one for City Room. That's what matters to us."

Vindu Goel, deputy technology editor of Bits, the tech news blog:

Bits launched in June 2007 among an increasingly crowded technology news market, but took a long-view reporting style in contrast to the quick-paced, casual tone at other tech sites.

"We don't cover all the breaking news in the blog the way that, say, TechCrunch does," Mr. Goel said. "We use [Bits] for some analysis that goes more in depth, with additional information about a story."

Bits has 12 contributors, including four editors. Mr. Goel said e-readers, the Google Books settlement and even the Netflix competition prize were popular subjects for the blog. Covering news like the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership deal, were also important milestones for Bits. Several posts about the subject worked better on the Web because by they fed news-hungry readers from the niche tech crowd.

Mr. Goel said Bits "is constantly working on" the voice of the blog. How can they make tech jargon accessible to the Times' broad readership without making tech nerds feel like they're reading a toaster's manual? Readers will usually tell them when they go wrong in the comments section, Mr. Goel said. "The interactivity is the best thing about the blog," he said. "We will get legions of comments, sometimes hundreds of comments, from all kinds of broad, general interest types of folks, asking how do I upgrade Windows Vista to people who will have a very heated about LED lighting."

Commentors have to register for NYTimes.com and Bits editors monitor posts to weed out the YouTube-like junk--no cursing or spam allowed. "We want to try to provide the readers with a better discussion," he explained. "People are expecting a little bit more from the comments."

Nick Bilton, a former user interface specialist for the Times, recently returned from working on a book to become Bits' new lead writer. He wrote in an introductory blog post that he hopes to open the discussion between readers and reporters even more. "The beauty of a blog is that it allows for conversation, not just oration, and I'll do my best to be part of the discussion," he wrote.

"I also hope to bring a new style of telling stories to the blog," he continued. "I don't believe storytelling is an art form of words alone. It's ocular, auditory, interactive and asynchronous. As I settle in and take off my training wheels, you can expect more graphics, audio slide shows, videos and data visualization on Bits."

Mr. Goel said, along with more multimedia features, he also hopes to include more "light and fun" posts between breaking news items.

"People take the Times so seriously sometimes," he told the Observer. "But I think it's okay for us have have a little fun too."

Tara Parker-Pope, lead writer for Well, a blog with the latest medical research and societal trends affecting personal health:

"It's difficult to compare blogs because we all have different goals," Ms. Parker-Pope told the Observer. The Lede might be gathering the most crucial daily news and helping Times readers understand it, while City Room is live-blogging breaking news. "For Well, we want to put readers' daily health conversation at the heart of the blog."

Ms. Parker-Pope "sifts through medical research and expert opinions for practical advice to help readers take control of their health and live well every day," according to the blog's description. But Well has also become a gathering place for readers to connect with Ms. Parker-Pope and the handful of running, nutrition, and other experts who occasionally contribute to the blog.

"On some days, my posts are based on my interests as an individual, as a single parent or a person who is trying to start exercising again," Ms. Parker-Pope said. "Those things are often reflected in the blog, but it's really to reflect what other people," she said.

"Well has a specific journalistic mission which is to really tell readers about their own lives," she continued. "Readers really like to learn about themselves and talk about themselves--we all do."

They also like to comment--a lot--and send Ms. Parker-Pope tips for stories. One of her favorite articles came from a readers' question, asking whether doctors and nurses should wear scrubs on the subway. Some commenters have become contributors. Kairol Rosenthal, a regular commentor on the blog, eventually wrote about cancer for Well.

Ms. Parker-Pope left The Wall Street Journal in 2007 to write about consumer health for The Times and she said she has never been closer to her readers.

She even trained for a marathon with them, and shared her experience, with a Web-based application called Run Well. 

Ms. Parker-Pope expects to expand on more running and recipe coverage. As far as multimedia features, she'd like to do more--if only there was more time.

"The limits to the blog are always about time as a resource," she said. "My goal is to continue serving this audience, engage them and interest them and surprise every now and then."

“What you can do with less, is less,” said Mr. Keller. “But if you are smart and careful, you can limit the harm.”

In the coming weeks, executives will be looking at various ways to streamline jobs and content production. In the course of that exercise, they’ll wander the seemingly endless labyrinth of NYTimes.com’s more than 70 blogs in search of things to cut.

“Many of our blogs serve a valuable journalistic purpose,” Mr. Keller said in his address. “Many draw a lot of traffic to the Web site.”

Yet …

“If we find instances where a blog or a vertical is consuming considerable effort and expense with little reward, we’re prepared to do some pruning,” Mr. Keller told the newsroom.

So which blogs are most likely to get the snip-snip?

Mr. Keller and executive representatives did not return messages for comment by deadline. But according to several Observer sources, the masthead has a few blog favorites that are presumed to be safe. Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook, as well as Tara Parker-Pope’s health blog, Well, are prized gems. Also, according to Observer sources, highly trafficked (and advertiser-friendly) blogs, including ArtsBeat, City Room, The Caucus, Bits and The Lede, can expect to be left alone.

>>Note: Get an insider's look at some of the NYTimes.com most successful blogs tomorrow on Observer.com

Some blogs—like At War, the Baghdad bureau blog that covers conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq—might be not bring in massive traffic, but serve reporting purposes, said sources.

Others are just darn cheap: Wordplay, a crossword blog, fills a niche and runs on next to nothing.

And what about the other 60-odd blogs? Many readers have likely never heard of Formula One, a blog about high-class auto-racing, or Laugh Lines, in which Week in Review editors highlight the best Web humor.

Still, lack of a massive readership isn’t the only criteria for cuts.

“They are looking at everything we do,” Jim Schachter, editor for digital initiatives, told The Observer in an interview. “I don’t think there’s any sign that the blogs and verticals are going to be decimated. In those areas, across the newsroom operation, the intent is to be as surgical as possible.”

Mr. Schachter spearheaded the launch of several blogs, including The Local, Media Decoder and the new Bay Area section. He is also in charge of verticals, what he calls “in-depth content sections" that cover honed subjects, like travel or business.

Each individual blog on NYTimes.com is different from the other in tone, content, mission and even style. Look at the design differences between the Lens photography blog and The Moment, T magazine blog covering luxury fashion, design and food, for example. They are meant to be distinct voices among the Times, speaking to different audiences, but does the Web site need all that shouting?

“We are and have been looking constantly at [the blogs],” he said. “But each desk needs to go back to the question: What sort of tools do you need to do the strongest reports?”

They also need to consider blogs and verticals that are doing well. “The Times has invested in certain verticals based on some projections and assumptions on their commercial salience,” Mr. Schachter said. The business, technology and health sections have been specifically promising, he said.

The Moment will launch with a new design within the next several days, he told The Observer. Come and get it, luxury advertisers!

“It’s all in a mode of continuous improvement,” he said.

Asked directly which blogs might be vulnerable, Mr. Schachter said, “I’m not going to sort of drown any of the babies in the bathtub.”

“It’s not useful for The Times to think of blogs in an entirely different category from the newspaper—it’s simply another platform for the exchange of information,” he explained.

But could the number of blogs be cut down?

“Unquestionably,” he said.

greagan@observer.com

Here's an outline of the info, gathered by Pingdom, a digital service that alerts businesses when their Web site is out of order.

- The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot. 82% of their users are male.
- Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
- The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
- The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.

So why are so many women connecting on social networks, but not as involved in social news sites like Digg and Reddit?

The Wall Street Journal reported on a study with similar results in early October, and spoke with Aaron Smith, a research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Men are more likely to use transactional types of tools, like online banking," he told WSJ. "Not to say that men don't like to talk, and that women don't need to get information, but in general when we look at the overall picture, we see women gravitating toward those applications that allow them to connect with friends and share information with people they know."

But perhaps the question is whether there truly are more women conversing on sites like Twitter, or if they are just spambots registering as females. Don Synstelien, a strategist for social networks who worked in research and development at MySpace, wrote on Pingdom's comment page that "possibly 25% of every 'female' profile that I viewed was a spam page."

A Thanksgiving survival guide on Hulu - Admit it: You'll probably be spending at least some of your Thanksgiving vacation hiding away from family members in your bedroom or at least firing up the laptop to watch some movies on the plane. Let Hulu be your window for escape. Here's a few suggestions from their "recently added" section:

So I Married an Axe Murderer - Woman. Woe-man. Whooooooooa-man. Here's a Mike Myers, post-Wayne's World classic where he plays a beat poet who falls in love with a mysterious butcher.

Pieces of April - Katie Holmes, somewhere between Dawson and Mrs. Cruise, played April Burns, a girl living in the Lower East Side trying to make her first Thanksgiving dinner for her dysfunctional family--with a broken stove.

Addams Family Values - Kind of the perfect movie for any holiday because the Addams are probably way more messed up than your family.

A cooking survival guide (for the kitchen) on the Food Network - Here's a bunch of videos in case you're looking for last minute recipes or need to figure out how to tell if a turkey is done or would like visuals on how to carve that bird.

Picking up where The L Word left off: Anyone But Me - From the executive producer team of award-winning playwright Susan Miller (The L Word and Thirtysomething) and Tina Cesa Ward (In Their Absence) comes this lovely Web show called Anyone But Me. The series follows New York City teenagers grappling with awakening sexuality and all kinds of identity crises. The show was created for StrikeTV.com, a site that launched during the writer's strike to draw attention to original programming on the Web--and it actually succeeds in showing us the potential of the medium. Catch up on the first season before the new episodes debut in December.

Biking Rules PSA winners - Transportation Alternatives recently hosted a PSA competition, asking the city's filmmakers to make Web-friendly clips that explain biking rules. The results were true, creative works of art. Check out this top prize winner, which displayed beautiful animation to show how wearing bike lights are not only safe but eye-catching. Or how it's important to make eye contact with drivers. We also like this old-school style Gear Up: Safety 'N' You video. Wear a helmet, people!

Beatles 3000: The mockumentary of the future - What if PBS did a documentary on The Beatles 1,000 years after John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie (yeah, you read that right--the lineup has changed!) died? Here's what it might look like (hilarity within).

One in 8 Million series on NYTimes.com - How many times have you walked around the city streets wondering about the people who pass you by every day--the pretty girl who sits next to you on the subway or the scruffy guy who orders an Americano at your coffee shop ? The New York Times' One in 8 Million series is one way to get to know them. "This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions." A new profile is posted every week. Don't miss Maggie Nescuir, who walks up to 90 miles a week in New York; Nancy Bunche, who has been the maid of four city mayors; Christian Hubert, who suffers from vertigo but still rides his bike across NYC bridges; or Mark Mocha, the ex-bank robber. We love them all.

Funny Business at the New Yorker on Big Think - Ever wonder why The New Yorker keeps publishing those old-fashioned looking cartoons? Big Think, a high-quality video site of pundits bloviating on lofty subjects, takes a look behind the line drawings in this series of videos. Editor David Remnick explains how the process works and why it's easier to get a reporter to dodge bullets in Afghanistan than to find a genuinely funny humor writer for those cartoons. Cartoon editor Robert Mankoff recounts his path to humor and the magazine. And you'll want to check out Josh Lieb, the executive producer of The Daily Show, saying "big deal"--those cartoons are cake for talented comedy writers.

92nd Street Y's Fridges - Last week, the 92nd Street Y debuted a new video series called Fridges. They're peeking inside well-known New Yorkers' pantries and freezer boxes to find their snack addictions, dietary restrictions and how long they keep takeout iaround. New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, is the first subject (she'll be at 92Y on Dec. 20 to talk about it). And yes, they realize they're biting off another reality TV show that airs on MTV.

Germans in the Woods - A StoryCorps animation - Since 2003, StoryCorps has been collecting audio recordings of people's stories:  conversations between sons and daughters, immigrants and natives, neighbors and strangers. Each participant received a free CD to share, and stories are also gets preserved at the Library of Congress. It's one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. Rauch Bros., a Brooklyn animation studio, is bringing some of these stories to life in beautiful videos. Here's one about an 86-year-old World War II veteran who, more than 60 years later, can't forget one soldier he killed in the Battle of the Bulge.