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For Dorm Life fans accustomed to kicking back on the common room couch and watching the show on a laptop, a new day has dawned.

Now – thanks to Boxee – you can kick back on the couch, close the laptop, and watch Dorm Life on the widescreen TV, perhaps with a buffalo wing in one hand and the beverage of your choice in the other. ASM’s intrepid scholar/blogger/hacker Matt Copenhaver provided the spark, and the folks at Boxee made it easy.

Boxee is the first “social” media center, whose free, downloadable software is changing the way consumers experience home entertainment. Boxee gives users a simple way to experience all of their entertainment in one place (in this case, the pimped-out common room HD entertainment center): movies, TV shows, music and photos from websites like Netflix, MLB.TV, Comedy Central, Pandora, Last.fm, and flickr.

Here are a couple of serious quotes from the press release:

“Boxee is a great distribution partner – they’re intensely focused on their audience, but they respect the rights of content owners,” said Peter White, CEO of Attention Span Media. “Boxee brings entertainment and social technology together to create a profound experience for viewers. It was an easy decision to use their platform to help Dorm Life fans get the show on their big screens.”

Boxee co-founder and CEO Avner Ronen chimed in:

“Shows like Dorm Life prove that original web content can be successful and profitable.  In addition, Attention Span Media has shown itself to be a pioneer in social entertainment, creating rich engagements in important online communities like Facebook and Twitter.”

One of the things we like best about Boxee: it lets you easily share what you’re watching with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social platforms. More than half a million people use Boxee to get their entertainment. Now those half-million can experience Dorm Life from the far side of the room. Learn how you can join them at www.boxee.tv .

66-lbs-of-salmon

ASM writing ace Jim Brandon is so good at, well, making things up, that we assumed he was taking some creative liberties when he emailed ASM HQ about the 40-pound Chinook salmon he’d caught on a fishing trip in British Columbia.

The twist turned out to be… that the whole thing was true. Have a look over here for the full account of the battle.

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Attention Span Media and CBS Interactive have partnered to bring Semester 1 and Semester 2 of Dorm Life to TV.com.

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That’s good news for a bunch of reasons, perhaps the best one being that Dorm Life fans can now experience the show on TV.com’s slick iPhone app (click here to download).

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Also excellent: TV.com’s seamless Facebook Connect integration, which lets you comment using your FB credentials and publish your thoughts to your friends’ FB news feeds.

See if you can spot the cameo by ASM cofounders Peter White and Garrett Law in “The Archaeologist.”

Link to full playlist: http://www.youtube.com/user/attentionspanmedia#grid/user/5BDFB4339017045E

Earlier this week, ASM’s Josh and Brian sat down for an interview with Rebecca at Hulu – Thanks for the opportunity Rebecca!  You can read the whole post here.

There are a few points from the interview worth teasing out:

• Be Intensely Audience-Focused - As Brian mentions, “We want to…give [our fans] a sense of ownership over the show, the theory there being if we make a real connection between one of our characters and a possible fan, then that fan will enter the realm of ’superfan’ and bring along a lot of their friends as well.”  We’re always looking for new ways to create the “wow” experience with our viewers.

• Respond to Evolving Tastes – Josh points out that “People have gotten used to watching longer-form content online, and they want more of what they like. It turns out, probably a large part of the reason that people only watched things that were short before was that the user experience wasn’t there yet. Hulu’s kind of taken it to a place where people can really enjoy the longer length.”  Viewers’ comfort with, and demand for, longer online content – largely because of Hulu, in our opinion – helped drive our decision to extend the length of Dorm Life episodes in Semester 2.

These factors were key in propelling Dorm Life to the #8 spot among Hulu’s most popular TV shows on Monday. The show we most enjoyed being ahead of, if only for a day: The Office.

SRD.

Boxee

For those who haven’t yet had the pleasure, Boxee is a media browser for PC, Mac, and Ubuntu computers optimized for the 10-foot viewing experience.  Whether your computer is connected to your TV or just your desktop display, you can

• Watch full episodes of The Colbert Report on the Comedy Central app,
• Learn the etymology of the word Lollipop on the HotforWords app, or
• Browse your friends’ pictures on the Facebook Photos app.

Yeah, but why is using Boxee for this stuff better than using a web browser like Firefox?

1. Remote Controlled - Yes, you can use a wireless keyboard and mouse, but why would you – when you could use your iPhone and the Boxee Remote App, or the Apple remote?  Boxee is all about consuming web content from across the room, in the supine position – my personal fav.
2. Slick Interface - Part of the reason Boxee is navigable with a remote is because of its clean interface.  Want to watch Chappelle’s Show on Boxee?  Comedy Central App -> Chappelle’s Show Stream -> Choose your clip.  Try doing the same thing on ComedyCentral.com, and you’ll be waiting for banners to load and sifting through hundreds of links to find Dave’s impression of Howard Dean (byah!).
3. It’s Social – See what your friends watched recently, and recommend content to them.
4. Innovative Apps – Something cool happened a few weeks ago.  Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures suggested an app that would allow you to tag your favorite videos to Watch Later.  Just a few days later, Daryn Nakhuda launched L8R, which allows you to tag your videos in Delicious, then watch them on Boxee – supinated, of course.  Several other apps, such as BoxQueue, are rocking this space as well.
5. They Made Their Alpha Version Public – Not everyone has the juevos to release an alpha version for public consumption (and criticism).  But Boxee is launching early and iterating often.  Love it.

So make your way over to Boxee.TV and download it.  We guarantee you’ll have fun.

Via Ad Age.

Dorm Life cracks Hulu Top Ten!

As far as we know, this is the first time Dorm Life has cracked Hulu’s Top Ten. Must be the enormous promotional budget we put behind it…Not! It’s the audience – you guys are amazing. Thank you!