Hulu, the popular movie and video portal featuring videos from a number of major U.S. television networks has updated its player interface and has brought a number of additional improvements for users, who are able to access all the content through the site for free (with ads).

The improvements have been outlined on the Hulu Blog, although you are likely to notice them when you watch a video. For example, I noticed the changes immediately and headed over to the blog to check out what has been included.

Changes revolve around the convergence of new technology now available, “lingering ideas form the product team, and user feedback.” These changes are expected to make the joys of watching television programming online easier, and these changes should be improved on further in the future.

Recently, Apple hasn’t been that shy about announcing sales figures to the world. Apple announced that they sold 300,000 iPads on the first day of availability (combined with pre-orders). Just a few days after that announcement, Apple stated that more than 500,00 were sold. That was more than two weeks away and didn’t take into account the surprisingly large demand for the 3G model, which went on sale April 30th.

Several analysts, including Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, are now estimating that Apple has sold more than a million iPads (most of them being shipped or sold to U.S. residents). Over the weekend, 49 of 50 stores surveyed were completely sold out of the iPad 3G. If his previous estimate stands, he will be extremely conservative for the June quarter, at just 1.3 million sales.

On April 30th, BumpTop announced that it had been acquired by Google. The software was only available for about a year to the public before this announcement. The CEO of TUL Corporation said, “BumpTop creates a brand new user experience for computer desktops,” a claim that very likely interested Google. 

Before this purchase, the company was regularly releasing updates for both its free and pro versions, which were available for both Mac and Windows computers. If you want to take advantage of the software, you will need to download it here, as nearly everything on the site (including these downloads) will be taken down within the week.

If you have friends and family who want to see your files or you have co-workers who need to be updated on a project you are working on, sharing your files is now easier than ever. While there may be thousands of sites out there that allow you to send and store files in a Web-based environment, few of them stand up to the tools offered by the services below.

1. MediaFire

MediaFire lets you upload files with (or without) an account. You’ll be able to upload an unlimited number of files, up to 200MB in size. You have no upload limits, either. A number of Pro accounts are available, ideal for users who want to share even more large (up to 2GB) files.

The one thing going for Firefox was the ability to customize the browser however you want. With the ability to install Greasemonkey user scripts out-of-the-box, there is little reason to continue using Firefox, unless you have a grudge against Google. If you aren’t familiar with the Greasemoneky extension, it was created in 2004 as a way to quickly customize pages using simple JavaScript, although it can really do a lot more than that. For example, you can see in the screenshot included the ability to see the people who have unfriended me on Facebook or view all the videos on YouTube in HD/higher quality.

Recently, it appears as though Google is trying to be the new Microsoft. The company originally created a search engine to compete with Yahoo and similar companies, yet now it feels as though it is better suited at creating tablets and operating systems, which is the same market Microsoft is in. While Apple may also be seen as an opponent (at this point) of Google, there are some clear reasons why Google may not be a direct competitor.

Google’s latest project, which the company is putting a lot of emphasis on, is the Chromium OS, which is an open source project. The primary focus is on netbooks, but it may eventually scale to other devices, including tablets. A mockup and UI concepts have emerged on this page, which indicate the direction Google may be taking when it begins producing a device for market.

Late on Monday, Apple issued a 294KB update for all 27-inch iMacs, which were introduced in October. The first firmware update came in December, and didn’t solve any of the problems. Apple claims that the displays aren’t suffering from a hardware issue, but rather one on the software side. Therefore, they aren’t suggesting you to return the displays, but instead wait for a more permanent fix than they’ve provided so far.

As a precautionary method for preventing further problems, Apple is halting production of the 27-inch models for some time, to ensure the fix works. The main problem was that the displays would intermittently flicker, which can be a real problem when you are trying to get work done.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system was expected to help boost the profits of the PC giants Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc., and others, but the end result is that the OS has only increased the profits of the Redmond-based giant. Laptop prices fell more than 23% year-over-year compared to the same quarter, resulting in an average price of $581. The increased sale of netbooks may have something to do with this, as well as more sales of $500-$700 laptops.

Deep discounts were given, although quarterly revenue is still much lower than in the 2007-08 time frame. Sales at electronics retailers like Best Buy benefitted from the surge in new customers with the arrival of Microsoft’s latest operating system, but largely, shipments vs. revenue has not been great for the PC manufacturers.

The Speak-er is a set of high-quality multimedia speakers that are compatible with your MP3 player or computer. They are designed to hep you make a statement, and will look good on any desk or environment. Just imagine using these to play one of your recorded speeches with!

They are constructed of polished white ABS plastic with a matte black steel grille. Each speaker is 4″x6″x2″, so they are quite small, but can still produce a good sound.

The speakers come from designers Mihoko Ouchi and Sherwood Forlee, who have also designed Anti-Theft Lunch Bags, a “New” Lamp, and Stacked Cups.

Availability is by early summer for $120, although there will only be a thousand sets produced.

Images of The Speaker have been included below.

PDFmyURL is a great service that makes creating and basic editing of PDFs extremely easy. For example, if there is a news story that you want to read later but fear that it won’t be there on the main page of the site, for instance, you can input the URL into the service, and a PDF will instantly be created. There is no waiting around for one to be created and no desktop application to download.

Advanced options are available, but they are only ideal for those who have a specific function in mind, like adding footers, changing the page height, or adding a table of contents. You can also drag the bookmarklet to your browser bookmarks bar, and you’ll have instant access to the tool, giving you the ability to create a PDF for any webpage.