The oft-reported-on site, Hulu, now has a special page up dedicated to providing us campaign ads (not just Presidential, either) dating from the 1950s through the 1980s… 32 in all.

There are spots for Reagan’s presidential run and re-election as well as for his run for governor of California (the one where he’s being endorsed by none other than John Wayne), Nixon’s presidential run, and the ever-infamous “We Like Ike” presidential campaign ad for Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Check out: Hulu’s "Historic Campaign Ads."

Okay, that 250 MB collection of MP3s you started in 1997 has now blossomed into 50 GB. If you’re not quite eager to play the iPod/Zune/PMP game then you’d probably like an alternative way to, perhaps, listen to the music collection you have at home on your computer at work or on your laptop while travelling. Fortunately, you have a few very easy options before you. You can take advantage of online services that either allow you to upload your entire collection and listen to it online or, alternatively, use a service that provides you with a quick and easy download that frees you from having to upload anything and, instead, just streams what you already have and enables playback through a Web site.

For the former, you can check out MP3Tunes, Musana or TunesBag. (And I’m sure there’s more out there.) These services allow you to upload tracks (MP3s and WMAs, typically) from your existing collection without having to worry about whether or not your home PC is connected to the Internet.

MP3Tunes currently grants you 2 GB of storage on free accounts. Upgrades are available and are pretty cheap. The next available plan offers you about 50 GB of space for $4.95/mo or $39.95/yr. One additional benefit of signing up with a premium plan is the ability you’ll receive to listen to your tracks via a selection of Locker-enabled devices (including mobile phones) which means that you don’t even need a computer to listen to the tracks you’ve collected at home. Once you have your plan, simply grab the company’s LockerSync software to upload your tracks.

Next up is musana. In my rather humble opinion, musana is the weakest of the bunch… at least for now. The site currently does not offer an uploader (not that we could find, anyway) available for use which means you’re going to have to use your browser’s file select option to upload your tracks. Once you have uploaded some tracks, the player’s interface is “neat-looking” but not as intuitive as it should be. (Not bad, mind you, just not great.)

Granted, the site is still in “private beta” so things might improve. Although, the last post to the company’s official blog was back in February ‘08. That said, I wanted to include the site as an option for music lovers on-the-go but don’t be surprised if musana ends up in the deadpool.

Finally, in the “upload-&-listen” cateogry, we have tunesBag. While tunesBag states that they currently allow for unlimited uploading via the tunesBag uploader application, you’ll need to contact them directly if you wish you upload more than 5-7 GB of music.

Your Best Bet Overall, Though…

If you’ve got a broadband connection at home, your PC is always on and you really want to minimize the amount of effort required to get your collection accessible from any computer you might be at, you may want to take a look at the following two free, albeit similar, services.

First up is JukeFly. With JukeFly, you sign up for an account, download the “server” application, point it to your music collection and then, well, nothing. Your music collection is instantly accessible from wherever you can hit jukefly.com in a desktop Web browser. The interface (shown below) is a little cartoonish (it’s entirely Flash-based) but it allows you to do everything you might normally do from iTunes or Windows Media Player: create new playlists, shuffle, search, rate songs, etc.

There’s even some social networking functionality built-in. You can share your collection with others, comment on songs or view other users’ comments on the same song and/or artist, find lyrics (if available,) and even connect to your last.fm account. It’s a pain-free way to access your favorite tunes on the road.

Our favorite pick…

The second and final option we’ll be covering here is Orb. Orb provides you with the same option as JukeFly (being able to access your music collection on the road without having to upload your entire catalog) but takes it a step further; thus making it our favorite choice overall.

In addition to being able to access your tunes (in a brilliant, iTunes-esque Web interface, by the way,) Orb also provides you with the option to browse your home videos, pictures and documents from a remote machine.

Hulu released their latest round of private beta invitations and left one in our inbox as well.  We’ve touched on the remarkable Hulu service before but, to recap, the service is a joint venture from NBC and Fox offering free streaming versions of your favorite new and old TV shows…and even a few movies. 

You can already find most of your favorite shows online just by going to the official site of the network on which the show airs.  (i.e., head over to NBC.com for new episodes of The Office or FOX.com for The Simpsons.)  However, this marks the first time (to our recollection) that two major networks have joined forces to present their own content in one, easy-to-navigate location.

The design is beautiful in its’ simplicity and is brilliantly clean and intuitive:

Most shows available on the site offer at least one full season of content (Arrested Development, anyone?) in addition to select clips ranging from a few seconds to a several minutes in length.

Once you’ve discovered your favorite shows and/or clips, you can add them to a playlist which can be saved for later viewings.  In addition, you can even provide people with the option to subscribe to your playlist(s) via an automatically updated RSS feed.  (Example.)

Despite whether you choose to watch just a clip or a full show, you have a plethora of options for viewing and sharing.  Pause the clip and, to the left, you can choose to view the clip in full-screen mode, as a pop-out in a sized browser window or just have Hulu dim the screen around the content.  (Unlike other online content providers, this feature just dims the area inside the browser – not your entire screen.  The latter would be a nice option and I’ll definitely be making the recommendation.)

Sharing your favorite clip and/or episode couldn’t be easier.  As you can see below, you can choose to either embed the content in your own page or E-mail it to friends/family.  You even have the option to customize the clip using a slider bar:

One additional note: content from NBC and Fox isn’t the only content available.  You’ll find episodes and clips from shows on a variety of different NBC/Fox-owned networks including F/X, MTV and Showtime are available amongst others.  The site also appears to be experimenting with linking to content available from other networks as well.  A search for "arrested development" had many results including two items from ABC. 

These turned out to be two clips from The View available at ABC.com but, if Hulu is a success, ABC, CBS and others might just begin to add their own content to Hulu’s site as well; thus leaving you with a one-stop-shop for all of your favorite shows.

The site is ad-supported and you’ll find small banner ads scattered throughout the site (one per page on average) in addition to 30-second spots during each piece of content.  The convenience and options are amazing and are the best I’ve seen to date.  If you happened to be the recipient of an invitation, let us know what you think.

Arriving on November 13th, along with the new Zune players, the accessories will be coming from Microsoft themselves, of course, as well as from an increasing list of 3rd-party vendors including Altec Lansing, GPS, Griffin Technologies, Memorex, Monster, Targus and more.

Some of the new accessories Microsoft announced today included new armbands, an Altec Lansing speaker dock, and new leather cases.  Check out some of the new accessories on the official Zune site.