Hulu, the online streaming video service, has just announced a snazzy new upgrade to go along with Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 8. Since I like Hulu, I thought I’d use their new design to point out some trends that online businesses can use to elevate their own branded properties.

It’s all about the grid

These days, website design is all about rows of graphical boxes that fit together like an old fashioned slider puzzle. We see it on Pinterest, the new MySpace, StumbleUpon and Facebook.

The new Windows 8 interface is all about the grid, using colorful boxes and graphics as navigational tools. Want to watch Family Guy on Hulu – click the box. No more tiny icons or long lists of links. This option works best with tablets and other touch screen technology, but the main point is that the grid is in.

I have not paid attention to Saturday Night Live in a while. In fact, when it is mentioned anywhere I am always a little surprised that it’s still on the air.

TechCrunch posted this skit from SNL, however, which was worth the few minutes if, for nothing else, to give some perspective about the ‘problems’ we ‘struggle’ through in this modern era. Your thoughts?

The sad part is that I know I sound like these critics sometimes. Ouch.

Imagine if Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, and Opera, all got together and wrote a book about web development. That would be some massive tome. It would cover everything from HTML to Java, CSS to mobile, social, sharing and SVG.

Wait! You’d don’t have to imagine it — it’s real! All those companies are working together on a project called Web Platform Docs. It’s a community-driven wiki that aims to document everything designers and developers need to know about the Open Web Platform.

Without the geek speak, Web Platform Docs is an in-progress collection of instructions on how to build pages for the web and for mobile. Why it’s important, is because right now, every browser and major web entity has its own nuances. Meaning a page that looks gorgeous viewed with Internet Explorer, might look wonky on Firefox.

If you are in the Washington, DC area on October 2-3 you should consider attending Digital East.

Why?

This is the third year of this event and it promises to be the best. Join the Digital East team for the great pre-conference intensive workshops in Advanced SEO and Search, Advanced Social Media or Email with speakers from Performics, PBS and more.

The main conference includes tips and insights from representatives from Google, Mashable, The Motley Fool, TheLadders, Adobe, IBM, the US Chamber of Commerce and many, many more.

I will have the privilege of moderating the Marketer’s Roundtable on the afternoon of October 3. If you are in attendance be sure to stop by and say hello!

There are fewer than 25 tickets left and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the low cost to attend. REGISTER TODAY!

See you in DC!

Facebook is saving your searches in your activity log.

It was announced by Facebook on Friday

Starting today, in addition to your other activity, you’ll be able to see the searches you’re making on Facebook. Just as you can choose to delete any of your posts, you can use the same inline control on Activity Log to remove any of your searches at any time. It’s important to remember that no one else can see your Activity Log, including your search activity.

What’s interesting is how Facebook positions this. They are saying that you can remove your searches. Translation: We have been tracking your searches for a while now ad before we get jammed again for abusing your privacy we are going to put out this preemptive strike.

While Twitter spent many months resisting attempts to hand over tweets to a criminal judge that belong to a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it could only hold on for so long. Reuters reports

Twitter handed over tweets from an Occupy Wall Street protester to a New York criminal judge on Friday after months of fighting a subpoena from prosecutors.

The company surrendered the micro-blogging posts to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino but they will remain under seal until another appeal by the protestor, Malcolm Harris, is argued next week.

Twitter held on as long as they could but Malcolm Harris’ luck with keeping that data private may have just run out.