When web video juggernaut Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog debuted last year, it inspired fan-made contributions to the world of the series almost immediately–something the Whedon family encouraged by soliciting supervillain applications to be included on the official DVD. But more than a year later, a group of Houston-based fans has taken things to a whole new level.

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When you run a news site and you get your hands on a video that you know is going to be huge–potentially-breaking-your-site huge–what do you do? In two recent cases, companies turned to new video platform providers that promised they could handle the strain. And in both cases, they appear to have done just that.

Celeb mag Us Weekly last month gained possession of a video of Michael Jackson sustaining the burn injuries that would kick off his lifelong (and ostensibly life-ending) painkiller addiction.

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Here are some things that have happened in the world since the last time Eminem released an original album:

* America elected its first black president.
* Saddam Hussein was captured and executed.

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Hollywood and the major record labels have always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with new media, alternating between roses and lawsuits for online entrepreneurs, if you will. Lately, it was looking a little like love was going to win. Hulu, after all, had convinced its detractors that even big dinosaurs can get things right, and record labels had started to embrace services like MySpace Music and Last.fm. But like an alcoholic who just can’t resist that drink, big media looks ready to relapse.

There’s been a lot of bad news out of the so-called Music 2.0 space this week, with Imeem said to be in financial trouble, and Last.fm forcing some of its subscribers to cough up around $4 per month. There’s also a storm brewing in the online video world, where some networks have started to take their most valuable content offline in order to maximize traditional revenue, and platforms like Hulu are being forced to fight any attempt to bring online content to the living room.

Record labels used to be something like the suicidal canary in the coal mine for Hollywood, eagerly moving from one life-threatening disaster to another.

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Hulu caused quite a stir this week when, at the request of rights holders, it shut down Boxee’s access to its streaming video platform. While many discussed the business implications of this move, some are ready to do more than just talk about it. One reader wrote to tell us that he’s gonna stop using Hulu altogether and go back to downloading TV shows via BitTorrent. Lifehacker editor Adam Pash apparently had the same idea, given his post entitled “How to Get Hulu Content on TV Without Hulu’s Help.”

Granted, so far this is all just anecdotal evidence. Chances are the move will cost Boxee more users than Hulu in the near term. However, these aren’t the only dark clouds on the horizon of Hululand; longer ad breaks and old media conflicts could turn people off Hulu-like streaming video platforms. Piracy, on the other hand, is getting easier and easier every day, with torrent sites and other unlicensed platforms just waiting to embrace Hulu renegades. Maybe it’s time to send the following memo to Hollywood: You can still blow this thing.

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The year of hope and change is certainly off to a grim start in the tech world. Last week alone saw layoff announcements from stalwarts like Intel (INTC) and Microsoft (MSFT), as well as Web 2.0 companies like Digg, just to name a few. If you’ve lost your job or had your salary frozen and are seriously tightening your belt, the (slightly) good news is that there are more options than ever to keep yourself entertained during these economic end times.

A few months ago, I defended the value of cable, writing that $70 a month wasn’t a bad deal for what you get. But as your wallet gets lighter, you may not want to spend $840 a year for service. Before you fire off a comment saying “Just watch Hulu!” yes, that is a good idea. Between Hulu and the network sites like ABC.com and CBS.com, you can watch just about any program you like for free. But then you’re watching on a small laptop screen while that big TV sits there, idle. You bought the big TV; you should use it.

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One way to think about online video is to consider how big a chunk it takes out of our daily lives. The amount of time U.S. Internet users spend watching video is up an impressive 40 percent year over year. Watchers tuned in for 273.1 minutes of online video in the month of November 2008, up from 195 minutes in November 2007, according to comScore (SCOR).

That’s not the only measure that went up. The number of videos viewed increased 34 percent, to 12.7 billion videos, up from 9.5 billion last November. But the number of video viewers is not growing quite as fast; it was up six percent, to 146 million from 138 million. Still, that’s stayed fairly constant since last year at about three-quarters of total U.S. Internet users (which is not in itself a fast-growing category).

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Ashton Kutcher’s practiced finesse and stage presence were completely out of place at the TechCrunch50 conference earlier this week, but his appearance was the talk of the show. Kutcher wasn’t in San Francisco to run a casting call for “Beauty and the Geek,” but to launch a Web video show focused on something about which he knows a fair amount: celebrity gossip. Celebrity spokespeople are a fact of life at this point, but celebrity tech founders? Like so many things, it’s a phenomenon that gets frothy every time there’s a bubble.

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Sure, most of us can get pretty fired up over the thought of a monthly 250GB bandwidth cap, but what about the companies that provide online video services? After all, as Om Malik pointed out, the cap isn’t about excessive bandwidth usage as much as it is about stymieing online video sources like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.

Roku, which makes the Netflix player, isn’t worried about the cap. The $99 set-top box maker is more of a facilitator than a provider, but its entire business is built upon delivering video to you over your broadband connection, so a cap could impact its sales.

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Bear with me for a minute, because I’m about to tell a long and self-involved tale. Ultimately I think it might say something interesting about platforms for television consumption, but of course that’ll be up to you to decide.

Before last fall, I barely had a television in my house and had only ever really watched TV shows over the last five years on DVD or iTunes. But then I started watching “Dancing With the Stars” through ABC.com’s downloadable player (the one that’s powered by Move Networks). I had personal connections to a few of the “celebrity” contestants–like our favorite web video hater Mark Cuban–and also wanted to use some of the software I was writing about. But let’s just say I went above and beyond just research.

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Wow, just when we question those EQAL guys’ reasoning for doing something dumb by pulling a hit series, they show they have something much more interesting up their sleeves. Wednesday at CBS’ upfront, a major partnership between the network and the just-funded start-up was announced.

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Man, there’s been a lot of comics-related news this week. Marvel Entertainment is keeping it going with its serious push into online territory. Marvel just hired former Sony Pictures Digital EVP Ira Rubenstein to head up its new Global Digital Media Group. With big budget high-profile motion pictures like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk on tap for this summer, what does Rubenstein have in mind for online?

I spoke with Rubenstein yesterday about his plans. Since he just started his new gig, he wouldn’t get too specific about budgets or plans to launch dedicated web series, but he definitely has the Marvel faithful in mind.

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With technologies like TiVo and text messaging taking over the world, marketers are being forced to rethink their approach to advertising.

The New York Times writes that NBC is hearkening back to its roots by moving beyond the 30-second commercial to form bigger, longer-term relationships with advertisers.

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Seesmic is a video start-up I’ve shied away from writing about too often, because I’m not sure I really get it. But I figure if so many smart people think there’s something good going on here, I should keep an eye on what the company is doing. So last week we had founder and CEO Loïc Le Meur on the “GigaOM Show,” where I and co-host Joyce Kim got to ask him what’s the big idea.

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During a recent earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said that his company will “work with Apple” to ensure that Flash apps would run on the iPhone. This after Steve Jobs publicly dissed Flash as being “too slow to be useful” and its stepsister Flash Lite as “not capable of being used with the Web.”

But like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” Flash is not going to be ignored.

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