Hulu's three owners -- NBC Universal, News Corp. and Disney -- want to bring the premium video service to Apple's iPad, but not without a fee, according to MediaMemo. "The most likely scenario is one in which access to Hulu on the iPad comes as part of a subscription package," sources tell the Wall Street Journal-backed blog. By contrast, Hulu has been free for Web users since its debut in 2008. "Depending on who you talk to, the pay service is either supposed to help the money-losing Web site turn a profit or compensate the networks for …

At the expense of popular Web app Wobble iBoobs, Apple has reportedly decided "to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store." Says Apple: "The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines." Critics say the move proves that Apple has little consideration for the app developers (arguably) responsible for popularizing it devices, and affects policy changes at the drop of a hat. "From what I can tell, this isn't an isolated incident," writes Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch. "This may be a case of Apple picking and choosing which …

Dutch website PleaseRobMe.com is getting some bad press for publishing a stream of away-from-home Twitter users -- which its dubs "opportunities" -- and their present geographic locations. Rather than criminal accomplices, however, its founders claim to be highlighting the dangers of location-based social networks like Twitter and Foursquare, which encourage members to broadcast their precise geographic locations to the world. Critics don't buy it. "They have raised a poignant and important issue about what people disclose on the internet but they could have done this so much better," Simon Davies, director of the Privacy International campaign group, …

Facebook is claiming that it recently managed to make the site two times faster over a six-month period, from last June through the beginning of this year. "We call the whole system BigPipe and it allows us to break our web pages up in to logical blocks of content, called Pagelets, and pipeline the generation and render of these Pagelets," explains the social network. Translation? "They managed to speed up the site primarily by reducing the number of cookies and cutting back on JavaScript," writes Mashable, before noting recent user complaints that Facebook is slower than ever. …

Sorry, New York! San Francisco's SFWeekly.com seems to believe that its fair city is quite likely to win Google's national broadband network contest. The search giant recently announced plans to build a new fiber network in one lucky city to demonstrate the viability of its new technology. Still, the paper suggests several reasons why Google might overlook the city by the Bay. For, "There are cities where anyone with a fistful of dollars can sign some papers in the morning and begin tearing up the streets in the afternoon," it writes. "That is not the case here." …

It looks like Steven Jobs messed with the wrong Web animation software. With the future of online content consumption on the line, Apple's CEO recently defended his decision not to support Adobe Flash on the iPad to executives at The Wall Street Journal. Going even further, sources tell ValleyWag that Jobs called Flash a "CPU hog," a source of "security holes," and a dying technology. "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology," Jobs said before comparing Flash to other technologies that Apple has rendered obsolete, including floppy drives and CDs.

Rumor has it that Google is taking a close look at a start-up specializing in cloud media. The Los Angeles-based startup, named Catch Media, aims to make it simpler for consumers to devour digital movies, music, and books across different hardware and service platforms. According CNet's Media Maverick blog, "it could help the search giant keep pace with Apple's expected efforts to take iTunes to cloud computing." Apple has recently engaged in discussions with top labels about offering a free streaming music service. Catch, for its part, has developed a technology that helps hardware companies and service …

Granting Google's Buzz launch official fiasco status, the service is now the subject of a class action complaint filed in San Jose federal court, which alleges that Google broke the law after Buzz shared personal data without the consent of users. The case was filed on Wednesday on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a Florida woman, by law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the legal complaint accuses Google of breaking various electronic communications laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The plaintiff is seeking injunctions to prevent the company …

Microsoft and Yahoo are finally being allowed to continue with the 10-year search alliance they negotiated last summer. The Justice Department and the European Commission just approved the deal with restrictions. As a result, Microsoft's Bing will now power Yahoo searches, while Yahoo will handle sales of search ads for both companies. According to Digital Daily, implementation is "expected to begin in the coming days," and is slated for completion domestically by the end of 2010. "While Yahoo is transitioning its algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, the search user experience is still its responsibility," Digital …

Further rankling the online ecosystem, hackers in Europe and China effectively broke into computers at over 2,400 companies and government agencies over the past 18 months in what The Journal is calling a coordinated global attack. The result? Not surprisingly, the effort exposed huge amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, security experts at NetWitness tell the paper. This marks the latest of several major hacks that have raised alarms for companies and government officials. Worse still, the operation is still ongoing, "and it isn't clear to what extent it has been contained," according to The …