LulzSec says that it is “the beginning of the end” for Sony. The hacker group has officially made Sony their number one priority after their successful and highly publicized attack of PBS earlier this week. In response to the PBS …

PBS has introduced a beta version of a new PBS.org with a focus on local content from member stations, full TV episodes and auto-localization features.

The new PBS.org features member station and partner content along with national productions as part of the home page, topic pages, special features and series sites.

PBS.org is automatically localized so visitors can view video, TV schedule information and content that is specific to their community.

PBS has partnered with YouTube to create a channel for its long running nightly NewsHour program.

The YouTube Blog offers more details. "The PBS NewsHour channel on YouTube  will host nightly reports from the NewsHour television broadcast, posted the same night the broadcast airs on PBS."

Google’s getting grabby.  The evidence: on his blog last night, Matt Cutts invited Yahoo engineers to come work for the search giant.  This afternoon, Google announced its acquisition of reCAPTCHA.  And now, there’s word that Google is attempting to buy Brightcove, too.

Brightcove is an online video platform with over 200 partners.  The companies it has ties to include powerful ones like Adobe, AOL, comScore, Nielsen, and OgilvyInteractive.  Plus Google.

PBS has launched a video portal in beta featuring full-length videos from the public broadcaster.

The online videos will cover all PBS genres along with content from local PBS stations. Eventually, PBS will include feature – length films and documentaries, as well as live performances and events. More content will be added on a weekly basis.

To celebrate their three decades on the air, PBS’ Nightly Business Report teamed up with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,

The PBS series MoneyTrack will place Scam Alert videos on MSN Money each week, as an ongoing series to warn people about the pitfalls of the financial world.

Small children are fighting their parents for the mouse these days.

Pretty soon they’ll demand their own laptops and want money to spend on their own music and web sites.

Presidential hopefuls vying for the Whitehouse will have a new opportunity to reach voters.

Yahoo, The Huffington Post and Slate have announced plans to host two online debates during the 2008 campaign.

An experiment in using contextual advertising to raise funds for the Public Broadcasting Service brought Google’s ubiquitous advertising to the broadcaster’s website.

As Wikipedia becomes larger and more widely accepted, now with an Alexa rank in the range of the top 30 websites on the Internet, it’s beginning to have an impact on people’s perception, accuracy, and donations strategies. All of which have been, for the most part, positive.

Responding to the demand for online programming, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) announced a five-year initiative to be sure Barney, Bert and Ernie are in line with the digital age. The initiative will include a number of new online offerings for preschool and early elementary school kids including a 24-hour multicast service, both launching in Fall 2006. PBS will not change its name to Public Multicasting System for obvious reasons.

Robert X. Cringely hosts Nerd TV, a web-only video series on PBS.org featuring figures from the tech world.