Video streaming service PlayOn from Media Mall Technologies recently added support for the Wii, which owners of Nintendo’s phenomenally popular video game console can use to watch Hulu, CNN and other selected channels online. It’s about time: The Wii excels at games, but when it comes to offering great online content, it’s running a distant third to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3. That in mind, I gave PlayOn for Wii a quick spin today. Instant verdict: Not a bad video streaming alternative for long format videos, but not yet ready for everyday couch surfing.

You first need to install the PlayOn program on a computer running on the the same network your Wii uses for Internet connectivity. (Instructions here; follow those closely before even turning on your Wii or downloading the client, or you may end up with hours of aggravation and confusion, like me.) Once PlayOn’s launched on your PC, just point your Wii’s web browser to “playon.tv,” and you’re in.

PlayOn’s Wii starting screen presents you with the available channels to choose from, including Netflix and Amazon, though you need to register your account info in the PC client, to access those services. Video quality is not bad, at least on my console — slightly better than the average YouTube video, but a notch or two below Hulu. PlayOn for Wii seems to stream long format videos well; I was able to watch an extended 60 Minutes segment without any sputtering. Overall, however, it is still very beta. For instance, many of Hulu’s listings don’t even have show/subject titles. (I only found Daily Show episodes after much digging, and got a 404 error for my pains.) YouTube videos don’t seem to come with a rewind or replay button. At the moment, channel navigation and content search is so kludgey and time-consuming, it’s not a very good solution for random viewing.

Final summary for Wii owners? Instead of using the 14-day free trial offer now, I’d wait a month or two (or three) in hopes the folks at Media Mall Technologies can work out the worst kinks, and only then give it a whirl before deciding if you want to plunk $39.99 down for a full license.

Flipnote Studio for the Nintendo DSi is a free, downloadable app which just became available in the North American market, and if you like doodling even a bit, you’ll want to check it out. The software turns the DS stylus and touchscreen into a drawing pad with numerous pages, letting you create flip book-style animations, the kind a lot of us used to make during boring elementary school classes. But it’s more than that: You can also use the DSi’s internal microphone to add a soundtrack to your mini-movie, and employ the gaming console’s camera system to incorporate photos into it.

That’s just the start, because you can then upload your animations from the DSi to Flipnote’s web site, where they’re viewable by others on a system which filters user contributions by popularity, views, ratings, and response comments. In other words, it’s pretty much a YouTube for flip book animations. (The videos are even embeddable on other sites.)

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To promote the latest installment of Illegal Danish, their popular World of Warcraft machinima series, D.W. Hackleman and his brother Clint came up with a clever conceit: They fully recreated the trailer of the hotly anticipated game Starcraft II with elements of Warcraft. Now instead of a cigar-chomping space Marine donning an armored helmet, the Hacklemans’ version ends with a spunky purple-haired gnome named Dirti G, ready to rock.

Converting Warcraft’s medieval fantasy trappings into Starcraft’s military sci-fi milieu was a painstaking task that Clint estimates took the brothers about 700 hours to complete. At the end, however, they had a machinima appealing to both Warcraft and Starcraft fans. (Both games, not coincidentally, are from Blizzard Entertainment.) That’s likely to attract more viewers to their Danish series, which according to Clint, has already been viewed over 10 million times. (He says the Starcraft II parody, which went online July 4, has already attracted 50,000 views.)

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Thanks to countless videos of the Iranian uprising now being streamed on its system, YouTube may suddenly seem to be at the center of international news. But from the company’s perspective, YouTube spokesman Scott Rubin insisted to me in a phone interview this afternoon, it’s more or less just another week at the office. The sudden rush of videos from Iran represent “the core of our mission,” he said. “It’s exciting to see YouTube being used this way, as it’s intended.” He also disputed a New York Times report from yesterday, which suggested the company had “relaxed its usual restrictions” against videos depicting violent imagery so that Iranians could freely upload footage that depicted the often brutal repression now going on in the streets of Tehran and other Persian cities.

In actuality, Rubin said, YouTube has always allowed exceptions for some violent videos that also contained educational, documentary or scientific value. In light of the uprising, he said, “We just pay special attention to make sure…everybody is understanding the policy.” To do that, the company reviews videos flagged by users as objectionable, taking in the whole context, including their titles, tags, and descriptions, along with the video themselves. From that perspective, he offered by way of example, raw cell phone footage depicting protesters running from police would probably be acceptable, but if it was mashed up to include gory close-ups in which “the intent was to shock or disgust,” it would come down. As far as the ideological content of the videos, Rubin made a point of saying, “We are completely agnostic on the politics of this.”

Rubin told me he didn’t know of variation in the number of videos that YouTube users have flagged as objectionable since the popular uprising and the government backlash began. Nor was he sure how many Iran-related videos have been uploaded since last week’s election. However, he did note that the service has dropped to 10 percent of its normal traffic in Iran itself. “We’re assuming we’re blocked” by the Iranian government, he said, though no official from the country has yet contacted the company. Then again, the Chinese government has been blocking YouTube since March, he noted, and no official from the People’s Republic has notified the service, either. Dealing with government censorship is just part of YouTube’s regular workload.

Team Fortress 2 has already been on the market for 18 months, but the multiplayer shooter from Valve Software didn’t reach the peak of its popularity until last weekend — thanks in part to this month’s release of Meet the Spy, the latest in a series of machinima shorts Valve produces to introduce the game’s characters. Up until last week, Valve’s director of business development, Jason Holtman, told me in a conference call, TF2 was hitting maximum concurrency numbers of 32,000 players; over Memorial Day weekend, however, that more than doubled to 68,000. (The single best sales day was also last weekend.)

Like the game itself, Valve’s video series is a clever reworking of traditional first-person shooter conventions, eschewing realistic violence and macho fantasy for cartoonish graphics and ironic wit. (In Meet the Sniper, TF2’s ruthless Aussie marksman gets flustered by his disapproving parents.) Meet the Spy is by far the most ambitious installment, depicting a trio of befuddled squaddies who try to locate an enemy agent in their midst, only to be undone by comic mishap and a surprisingly romantic plot twist.

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To launch his SXSW panel, “Comedy on Television and the Web,” moderator Ricky Van Veen of CollegeHumor.com opened with a provocative but arguable point: Unlike previous technologies, humor and not porn is driving the adoption of online video.

What followed was a smart and (yes) funny conversation between leaders in web-based comedy and a couple luminaries in televised humor pondering how large web comedy can become compared with TV, and how the two mediums will influence each other. From the online world were panelists Van Veen, Keith Richman of Break Media, and Avner Ronen of Boxee;  Meredith Scardino, staff writer for The Colbert Report, and B.J. Novak, a star and writer for the U.S. version of The Office represented for old teevee. Here are some of my other favorite highlights, arranged as a series of questions (sometimes posed by the audience or panel, and sometimes by me):

Why are Hollywood stars afraid of Web video?

Van Veen notes that besides the occasional exception like Will Ferrell, most Hollywood stars are skittish about web video. Novak (left) speculates that they’re uncomfortable because it doesn’t have much connection with the film industry’s development infrastructure (the personal connections, the talent agencies, etc.) that they’re familiar with. Richman said he believes stars are afraid because the web is a democratic environment, where their efforts can be noticeably eclipsed by the latest grassroots breakout. Read more of this story