The code, which can be viewed with any browser, shows a button labeled “Add to My Drive,” but the button itself is currently not visible to end users within Google Docs. Notable about this is the capitalization of “My Drive” — The Journal reported that the product will simply be branded as Drive, but this suggests that at least the personal storage component of it may actually be called My Drive.

It’s unclear when exactly Google added the button to the Google Docs code. A quick Google search revealed that the Spanish Tecno-Net blog stumbled across the code snippet as well some time last month.

Update: Traces of the product apparently popped up in Google Docs as early as last September, as one commenter pointed out below. Also, take a look at some of the rather interesting things reader Brian Ussery has unearthed.

Image courtesy (CC-BY-SA) of Flickr user Sebastian Fuss.

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“We’re not ready to discuss our future product roadmap . . . but it was a useful tool to demonstrate to the FCC where innovation is headed in the TV space for both over the top and over the air/QAM,” we were told by Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen. The filing itself also states that “both the Boxee Box with Live TV and the products under development provide consumers with competitive alternatives to traditional pay cable delivered via rented set top boxes.” Of course, one could argue that any over-the-top offering with access to online sources like Netflix can be an alternative to your cable box — but that is already true for the existing Boxee Box. The need to black out two entire paragraphs in the filing leads me to believe that Boxee is instead working on additional ways to access and consume over-the-air broadcast and cable TV.

So what does it have in store for us? Here are some possibilities:

• DVR functionality. This has been the most-requested feature ever since the Boxee Live TV tuner came out earlier this year. The tuner currently only displays what’s airing at any given time, but a software update and an attached hard disc could turn the combination of Boxee Box and Live TV tuner into a full-fledged DVR.
• A Boxee TV. Viewsonic was supposed to release a TV set powered by Boxee last year, but it scrapped its plan when consumer demand for smart TVs didn’t materialize. Of course, that doesn’t mean that another TV manufacturer couldn’t fill the gap. A TV with a built-in tuner would obviously also have access to Boxee Live TV and as such be impacted by any attempt to encrypt basic cable.
• A revamped Boxee Box with internal storage. This would go well with any DVR offering, in part because not every consumer wants to have an external hard drive and a USB dongle dangling from their Boxee Box. Of course, it would also be possible to directly add the TV tuner to the Box. But this could bring costs up even further, so I would expect this to be sold separately for the foreseeable future. Iomega is already selling a Boxee device with a hard drive in Europe, but the company told us it doesn’t have any plans to bring the device to the U.S.
• A cable set-top box. Yes, you read that correctly. Boxee has been big on cord cutting rhetoric lately, but the company is reportedly also talking to smaller cable operators about using Boxee’s platform as an alternative to the traditional cable box. This could be done with the existing Boxee Box and a Live TV tuner, but one could also imagine slightly revamped hardware that could offer subscribers online video, basic cable channels and a DVR for a small monthly fee, much like Sezmi used to offer. But instead of selling it directly to consumers, Boxee would offer the device through a regional cable company.

We will likely have to wait a while until we know what the company has up its sleeve. However, the success of the Live TV tuner — the device is currently sold out and on back order — shows that the company is clearly on to something here. And while the list of possible products above is admittedly pure speculation, it goes to show that there is a lot of potential for Boxee to innovate in this space.

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Why drop the .tv from its name? “This was done to distinguish the network’s content from that of traditional TV,” the press release informs us. Because the worst thing that could happen to a web video site is of course that people assume you’re serving up TV content, right?

The move is a little baffling, especially because Blip has gone to great lengths to reinvent itself as a kind of “Hulu for web series” over the last couple of months, deemphasizing the video sharing part of its business and instead concentrating on becoming a distribution platform for web series makers. That being said, the transformation seems to work well for the site, which also said Wednesday that it doubled its revenue in 2011.

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At the core of the issue is whether cable companies should be allowed to encrypt their basic cable programming, something that existing regulation doesn’t allow. Unencrypted signals can be used by tuners built into most modern TV sets as well as equipment like Boxee’s live TV tuner to access these basic cable channels straight from the coax cable that comes out of your wall, without the need for any set-top box.

Cable companies have asked the FCC for waivers to these restrictions, arguing that encrypted channels would reduce piracy and that encrypted cable connections can be remotely serviced, eliminating the need for many service visits. The FCC is currently hearing all sides of the issue as it contemplates whether to do away with the restrictions and allow all cable companies to encrypt basic cable. Boxee has filed multiple letters with the commission and met with its staff last week.

On Wednesday, the startup wrote on its blog:

“[The cable companies’] real motivation is to prevent you from being able to connect the cable from the wall directly to your TV or Boxee Box. You will need to rent a set-top box from your cable provider, pay an extra $5–$15 per month and it will no longer work with your Boxee Box or similar devices. The cable companies are losing subscribers every quarter. If they want to reverse that trend they should look into building better products, reducing prices and improving customer service, not going to the government asking for rule changes to force consumers into spending more money and blocking start-ups from competing.”

Boxee’s position has been shared by Public Knowledge as well as the Consumer Electronics Association and consumer electronics manufacturers like Hauppauge, which makes the Boxee dongle. The cable companies, on the other hand, have been getting support from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as well as some municipalities, including Miami.

Altogether, more than 80 documents have been filed with the FCC on the issue. Many of these filings from both sides make it clear that this is about not only what is going to happen to those basic cable channels but also the role that consumer electronics manufacturers, cable companies and startups like Boxee will play in the future of pay TV.

Consumer electronics makers have long favored a new standard called AllVid that would provide a new interface among traditional pay-TV services, online competition and connected devices. Cable companies opposed the standard; Boxee, on the other hand, came out in favor of AllVid in the presentation to the FCC last week, stating on one of its slides that “AllVid holds exciting potential for development of new consumer devices delivering integrated entertainment experiences.”

Check out our video review below to see how Boxee’s live TV tuner works:

Image courtesy of Flickr user familymwr

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iLike launched as a standalone service in 2006, initially focusing on a combination of a web service and an iTunes sidebar. In early 2007, it debuted as one of the first music apps on Facebook, and soon attracted millions of new users per month. What made iLike so successful? The service not only offered free streaming, but also tracked users’ listening habits and served up social recommendations. The service also attracted bands and labels, who used it to create buzz for new releases.

At one point, it had 10 million monthly active users on Facebook alone, generating some 1.5 billion page views. The company got $17 million in funding, including a $13 million investment by Ticketmaster, and briefly seemed like the next big thing in online music.

However, iLike struggled not only with licenses for its music, but also with its reliance on Facebook as a platform as well as its overall business model: Turns out, serving up free, ad-supported music is really, really hard, and concert ticket referral fees never really made a big difference either. iLike eventually sold to Myspace for a reported $20 million in 2009, and has since been living alongside the more popular Myspace Music service, slowly withering to obscurity.

Of course, iLike isn’t alone with this fate: Imeem, which offered a very similar service, was also absorbed and eventually shuttered by Myspace. Napster’s assets were sold to Rhapsody last fall, and the service eventually shut down in December. And Apple shuttered Lala’s streaming service after it bought the company in late 2009 to power its cloud platform.

All of this should be a warning to music services like Rdio and MOG, which currently are trying to grow their user base with free music. Insiders have long predicted that even Spotify, arguably the biggest of this new crop of streaming services, can’t be profitable with the licenses offered by the labels. And if there’s any lesson to be learned from iLike, it’s that a large user base alone isn’t enough to succeed.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Hitchster.

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Show notes for this episode:

• All eight episodes of the first season of Lilyhammer are available on Netflix.com. You can find the trailer on YouTube as well.
• Battleground will debut on Hulu.com on February 14 and will be available to both Hulu Plus subscribers as well as users of the free web version of the service.
• The Tester’s season 3 launched on the PlayStation Network as well as Playstation.com on February 7. Check out our article about the show.
• Crash Course is available on YouTube.com. Check out our article about the show.

How do you like Lilyhammer? What are your thoughts about Battleground? Let us know in the comments, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com.

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• Brightcove had 3,872 customers in over 50 countries by the end of 2011.
• The company’s 2011 revenue was $63.6 million, compared to $43.7 million in 2010. Its net loss in 2011 $17.8 million, compared to $17.3 million in 2010. It expects to continue to have losses in 2012.
• Brightcove employed 312 people in 9 different countries by the end of 2011.
• Brightcove generated 66 percent of its revenue in the U.S. in 2011.
• Brightcove’s customers served on average 743 million streams per month in 2011. More than half of those streams were delivered outside of the U.S..
• Most of the media is delivered through Akamai and Limelight, but the contract with Limelight is currently up for renewal.
• The New York Times is not only one of Brightcove’s biggest customers, but also a minority shareholder that owns less than 5 percent of the company’s stock.
• Brightcove doesn’t mention any of its direct competitors by name, but mentions YouTube three times in the filing.
• Brightcove will trade at NASDAQ under the stock symbol BCOV.
• The offering is led by Morgan Stanley and Stifel Nicolaus Weisel, and underwritten by RBC Capital Markets, Pacific Crest Securities and Raymond James.

What does the filing mean for the online video space in general? Our own Ryan Lawler summed it up best last August:

“Brightcove deserves kudos for making it this far while other online video companies have either been acquired at fire sale prices or bit the dust. But the modest revenues revealed by its IPO filing show just how hard it is to make money in online video, even while viewers are tuning in droves.”

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The company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos announced the release on the company’s blog with the following words:

“Do you love the indulgence of watching episode after episode of your favorite shows on Netflix? Have you ever wished you could do the same with new shows when they premiere on TV?”

He went on to say:

“Unlike any major TV premiere before it, we are debuting all eight episodes of the first season at the same time today. Conventional TV strategy would be to stretch out the show to keep you coming back every week. We are trying to give our members what they want; Choice and control. If you want to watch one episode a week, you can. If you want to watch the whole season this week, you can do that too.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings echoed a similar sentiment when asked about the unusual move during the company’s most recent earnings call:

“Netflix’s brand for TV shows is really about binge viewing. It’s the ability to just get hooked and watch episode after episode. It’s addictive. It’s exciting. It’s different. And our release strategy for original content emphasizes that brand strength, which is to be able to get hooked and pour through those episodes rather than get strung out.”

It’s a remarkable move, and it shows how different Netflix is from the traditional TV world, despite the company’s repeated insistence that it’s just like HBO. Netflix’s subscribers are not used to any schedule, and the company wisely chose not to break with those expectations.

But it’s also a gamble on a different kind of buzz. Traditional TV networks try to generate as much word of mouth excitement as possible within the first few weeks to get enough people hooked on a new show to keep it going. Netflix, on the other hand, can be perfectly happy if the majority of its customers watch something else on the service in the next few weeks, as long as it gets a core fan audience hooked on the show  - at which point they’re going to talk about it, much in the same way you’d recommend a show like Arrested Development or Breaking Bad to a friend who hasn’t seen it.

Finally, the binge viewing approach also tells us something about how Netflix views its online competition. Hastings has long said that he is not interested in catch-up TV, and the fact that Netflix hasn’t been offering current-season TV shows the day after they air on TV has been the biggest difference between it and Hulu.

Of course, Hulu has recently been struggling with broadcaster’s demands to protect the next-day window. Fox shows are now only available to paying Hulu Plus subscribers or viewers who authenticate as Dish subscribers, and other networks may follow suit sooner or later. With Lilyhammer, Netflix seems to tell Hulu: Look, we can get new content too – and we’re not slave to anyone’s schedule.

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PlayStation Network executive producer of original programming Kevin Furuichi told me during a phone conversation last week that The Tester’s third season, which begins this Tuesday, will for the first time be available for streaming on the web as well, which should result in even bigger viewership numbers. “We are really excited that we are able to deliver an audience,” Furuichi told me.

Check out the trailer below:

The Tester has twelve gamers competing in challenges that look like a mixture of Fear Factor and real-life video games, and the winner will get a job as a Production Associate in Sony’s Santa Monica video game development studio. Furuichi told me that his team initially tried to make The Tester look more like a web series, with shorter, snack-sized episodes. But the audience actually wanted to see more, so now the show is running half an hour per episode, much like a traditional TV show. Furuichi readily admitted that Sony learned some things from traditional TV production for The Tester: “It is not about changing reality TV,” he said.

So why does Sony produce original programming like The Tester for its PlayStation Network audience? It obviously works well as branded entertainment; the contestants regularly get to try out new Sony game titles, and even meet a few game industry legends. But Furuichi also said that it’s about adding value to the PlayStation Network in general. “It brings people into the network,” he told me.

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Are you one of those people who just watch the game to catch a glimpse of the ads? No worries, you’ll find all of those online as well. There is also a bunch of second-screen action going on this year to deliver tweets and other extra content to your cell phone or iPad while you watch TV. And speaking of mobile: You’ll even be able to watch the entire game on your handset. You know, in case that laptop screen is to big, or you happen to be away from both Internet and TV.

Here’s our growing list of online resources for Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday 02/05:

• NBCSports.com will show the entire game online starting with some of the pregame action at 2pm ET (11am PT). The kickoff is at 6:30pm ET (3:30pm PT), and the game will feature HD-quality streams from multiple camera angles, DVR-like functionality to pause and replay the action and a number of social features.
• Verizon subscribers will also be able to stream the game on their phones through the NFL Mobile app, which is available for both iOS and Android. More info on the app here.
• Viewers in Canada will be able to watch the game via Bell’s mobile apps.
• Twitter has aggregated all the relevant accounts and hash tags to follow in this blog post.
• Hulu has once again aggregated Super Bowl ads in its Adzone.
• YouTube has Super Bowl ads, recipes and more in its AdBlitz channel.
• At least five of the ads shown during the game will use Shazam to offer free downloads, sweepstakes and other stuff meant to entice you to join the second-screen action. More about this on Shazam’s blog.
• Sports social mobile app PlayUp has teamed up with St. Louis Rams running back Steven Jackson and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson to chat with football fans during the game.

We’re gonna update this list with additional links in the coming days. Stay tuned!

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Here’s what’s new to this update:

• Google TV now supports hardware acceleration, which should make apps with animation effects much snappier.
• Updated devices also support HTTP Live Streaming. This should not only help with HTML5 web video, but finally make local media streaming through apps like Plex work on the platform.
• Improvements to the way Google TV identifies channels will make it easier for app developers to build their own EPGs.
• Google TV’s Chrome browser was also gets an uplift.

So when will Ice Cream Sandwich come to Google TVs? We asked a Google spokesperson, but didn’t receive a reply in time for this story. There are rumors that the Ice Cream Sandwich update will be made available before the end of the year. Google TV folks have said in the past that there will be smaller updates throughout the year, with a bigger emphasis being put on updating apps for the platform in the coming months.

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A significant part of this has been driven by the smashing success of the Khan Academy. Salman Khan’s no-frills biology, calculus and physics lessons have clocked close to 120 million views on YouTube since he started uploading them in 2006. However, there is a growing movement toward more entertaining and visually appealing lessons that speak the language of the YouTube generation.

The most recent examples for this type of programming include some projects launched in January as part of YouTube’s new channel initiative: Crash Course, for example, combines lessons about biology and world history with smart humor, a YouTube-typical in-your-face style of narration and professionally animated graphics.

Crash Course is a co-production of Hank and John Green, of Vlogbrothers fame. The channel launched just days ago, and the duo have already managed to get around 275,000 views with little more than two lessons posted. John Green told me during a phone conversation this week that he has been very excited about this initial success: “It really stabs in the heart the lie that YouTube is about cat videos,” he said.

The Vlogbrothers are among dozens of content makers that have been receiving sizable advances from YouTube to professionally produce content. Reports put the total spent by Google for this kind of content north of $100 million. That money buys YouTube participation from stars like Rainn Wilson and Tony Hawk, but the initiative also includes around a dozen channels with news and educational content.

Many of these channels are part of YouTube for Schools, a program launched last month that offers educational institutions access to a controlled YouTube environment to ensure that students don’t goof off watching the latest music videos. Green told me that he has already received “dozens of emails” from students who were introduced to his new show by their teacher. “People are already watching Crash Course in classrooms,” he said.

But with great power comes great responsibility; in this case, there is a duty to get the facts right. Green has been using a real-life educator to make sure that he doesn’t get his history dates mixed up. Fact-checking is absolutely necessary for this kind of content, he told me, admitting, “I don’t trust myself.”

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EyeIO has been operating stealthily since the end of 2010, and it was able to win Netflix as a customer last summer. Netflix hasn’t said where and in which capacity it is exactly using the technology it has been licensing from eyeIO, but the company’s VP of Product Development, Greg Peters, said in a press release that eyeIO is “an important part of the technology [Netflix uses] to improve video quality and overcome bandwidth challenges presented by Internet infrastructure.”

Standard-definition Netflix streams can consume up to 2.2 Mbps of bandwidth. Netflix’s 720p HD videos come in at roughly 3.8 Mbps, and 1080p videos go up to 4.8 Mbps. EyeIO CEO Rodolfo Vargas told me during a phone conversation on Tuesday that his company’s encoding technology can achieve better-looking results than most established encoders with 20 percent bandwidth savings and that eyeIO can still deliver similar quality to other encoders with up to 50 percent bandwidth savings. Content in 720p could be streamed using 1.8 Mbps, he explained. The company does this by optimizing the encoding process, which means that the results are regular, albeit smaller, H.264 files that can be played by end users without any need for additional plug-ins.

Bandwidth savings like these could be crucial to a company like Netflix both in wired as well as wireless networks. Netflix has been struggling with ISPs’ imposing bandwidth caps, and it is allowing its subscribers to voluntarily degrade their streaming quality to avoid hitting those caps. The company also started an aggressive international expansion last year, rolling out its service throughout Latin America, where average network speeds are often lower than in the U.S.. And finally, Netflix has also seen significant traction on mobile devices, where bandwidth caps are often much lower than on fixed networks.

EyeIO was founded by online video technology veterans; Vargas used to be the senior program manager for video at Microsoft, and one of his co-founders, Robert Hagerty, used to be the chairman and CEO of teleconferencing provider Polycom. The company is privately funded and currently has fewer than 10 full-time employees but is looking to expand over the coming months.

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The company announced the move late last year, and Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen confirmed Monday that the company is going through with its plans, despite some criticism from Boxee’s early adopters.

Boxee released the last version of its software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at the end of December, and Kippen wrote at the time in a blog post:

“We believe the future of TV will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs / Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones. While there are still many users who have computers connected to their TVs, we believe this use case is likely to decline as users find better alternatives. People will continue to watch a lot of video on their computer, but it is more likely to be a laptop than a home-theater PC and probably through a browser rather than downloaded software.”

The most recent PC version of Boxee won’t be supported by the company going forward. Boxee will instead concentrate all of its efforts on the CE market, where it’s been selling the Boxee Box manufactured by D-Link for more than a year. It recently released a USB dongle that brings live broadcast TV to the Boxee Box and also released an iPad app last year.

Still, some of Boxee’s early adopters are pretty upset about the company’s decision to cease support for PCs. The blog post announcing the change provoked hundreds of comments, most of them negative. Boxee may be able to win some of those users over, but many are likely going to look for other solutions. Benefiting from this could be two media center products:

• XBMC is the open-source media center software Boxee is based on. It originated on the Xbox and focuses mainly on local media playback, but can be extended to play online video from various sources through a number of add-ons.
• Plex is, like Boxee, also based on XBMC, but has been going a slightly different route, focusing on a client-server architecture that makes it possible to play media on many different platforms. Plex most recently introduced an app for the Kindle Fire  as well as a personal cloud service.

As for Boxee, cutting its losses and concentrating on its CE platform should help the company keep up with an emerging market that pits it against much bigger players like Google and its Google TV platform. Boxee currently has 45 employees, and the company has raised a total of a $28.5 million in funding.

Check out our video review of the recently released Boxee Live TV dongle below:

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Rose said that one of the interesting things about the integration of music services like Spotify has been that more often that not, lesser-known bands show up in the Top 100 of most-shared acts. “It’s not reinforcing the same songs that everyone listens to,” he said.

He also explained that enhanced sharing functionalities have brought in some additional revenue on other levels as well. One example: Ticketmaster makes an additional $5 of incremental revenue every time someone shares on Facebook that he has just bought a concert ticket, according to Rose.

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The report was commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which counts companies like Google and Facebook as its members. It’s definitely worth a read (check out the full PDF) and will likely provoke discussion, especially in light of the entertainment industry’s ongoing push for tougher copyright laws. For a CliffsNotes-like version, check out the following infographic:

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