Combine the smart hotness of Hot For Words with the non sequiturs of Ask a Ninja, and you get 2 Hot Girls in the Shower. Sure, Kim Evey (producer, The Guild) and Julie Wittner (actress, Pushing Daisies) aren’t as educational as Hot For Words, but they’re certainly hotter than Ask a Ninja.

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Fresh from her success in Dr. Horrible, Felicia Day returns to her Guild roots with a new machinima sitcom.

Machinima.com has hired her to write a sitcom set in–where else?–a popular video game. Look for five short-form episodes that will eventually be combined into a half-hour pilot; audience feedback will affect the creative direction of four more such half hours.

Gamers are some of the most vocal people on the Web. She’ll definitely have a lot of audience feedback to work with.

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Rick Astley performed in my city last night. Astley’s career has recently been revived by the Rickroll, a popular online video bait-and-switch prank. Acknowledging that which revived him, Astley pulled a bait-and-switch on his audience by having a local celeb sing the Rickroll song, Never Gonna Give You Up.

The local celeb is named Roderick Paulate, so this became a Roderickroll. You’re a punny one, Rick.

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The first three acts of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the online tragicomic musical by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) starring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D., Starship Troopers) and Felicia Day (The Guild), are now streaming free on Hulu. Whedon wrote Dr. Horrible during the WGA strike, verifying Duncan Riley’s prediction of WGA talent being diverted from Hollywood to the Web.

Unlike most Hulu videos, this one’s available outside the US. Also unlike most Hulu videos, it’s not TV shovelware. Joss Whedon writes outside the constraints of the idiot box, taking advantage of the stylistic freedom offered by online video. Felicia Day, of course, is a truly organic online video star. Neil Patrick Harris, who previously did only longform offline stuff, knows how to pack a performance into a fourteen-minute embeddable episode.

Whedon plans a fourth episode. Let’s see if he can further learn the ropes inside online video.

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Google has been harvesting speech recognition data through Google 411 for a while now. Apparently, the service has yielded a good harvest. YouTube now extracts metadata from spoken words in videos. Obama and McCain are the first test subjects; expect YouTube to start eavesdropping on every word you say in a YouTube video.

You know what happens next, right? After YouTube videos, Google will apply this technology to every video on the Web. Soon, you won’t be able to say a word inside online video without the Googlebot hearing it.

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TV execs who see online video as a mere supplement to TV had best wake up and smell the coffee. A new study shows that 50% of American online video viewers watch network shows online instead of watching them on TV.

We’re already seeing network shows include clips obviously made for the Web. Soon whole network shows will be obviously made for the Web.

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..or goofy, depending on your tastes.

Vlogger Christopher Mast clearly has… unique tastes.

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I just found out via TWIT that Tekzilla and Qore star Veronica Belmont played Leisure Suit Larry. She is now officially my gaming goddess. Happy birthday, Veronica!

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You think Prince bullying a baby and losing is stupid? Check out his record label’s defense against the countersuit.

…Universal told a judge this week that, even though the clip may in fact be “fair use,” it was still “infringement” and therefore the initial takedown notice was made in good faith.

People caught lying often try to find loopholes in their own words. You know you’ve lost an argument when you resort to splitting semantic hairs.

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Most anime mashups simply tack music from one opening/ending on footage from another. YouTuber lyndonmaxewell goes one step further. He recreates entire anime openings/endings, shot for shot, using footage from other anime. Watch how he brilliantly recreates the first Gundam Wing opening using footage from Gundam 00.

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