YouTube may finally have a real competitor.

Video-streaming newcomer Hulu, a joint effort between NBC Universal and Fox, opened to the public last week after a four-month trial period. It provides full-length TV episodes and movies to be viewed for free online.

Every movie about a strike needs a heroine, someone brash enough to stand on top of a table with a megaphone and demand justice.

But some credit for the possible ending of the three-month-old strike by the Writers Guild of America may be going to a different sort of heroine.

New York Times reporter Michael Cieply writes today that Laeta Kalogridis, most recently the executive producer of Bionic Woman, helped bring the warring parties together not with a megaphone but with a phone and with e-mail.

Connections can be good, but they can also become conflicts of interest.

Former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell released his report Thursday on the illegal use of steroids and other performances enhancing substances by Major League Baseball players.

Mitchell, 74, is widely respected, the sort of statesman who’s called in to fix problems others can’t solve. But he also has past and current links to baseball, including his role as director of the Boston Red Sox.