The TV Guide has been virtually obsolete the past 6-7 years. With the Internet and Digital Cable channel guides no one feels the need to sift through a paper pamphlet and schedule out the shows they want to watch. After 53 years of deciphering standard television, TV Guide has decided to take on Internet video as well.

A test version of the service, which will allows users to search for clips and full versions of TV shows, will be available next month; a full-scale launch is planned for September. TV Guide has decided to focus on the standard network television offerings, only indexing those videos available from networks like ABC, FOX, and CBS, rather than indexing the millions of user created videos from services like YouTube and Revver.

“Everybody says, ‘Who’s going to be the TV Guide of online video?’ and we say, why shouldn’t it be us?” said Richard Cusick, senior vice president of digital media at Gemstar-TV Guide. “We’re making a bet, but we think it’s a safe bet and consistent with our mission.”

This move shows promise, as online video is certainly becoming a hot commodity. Last week, News Corp and NBC Universal announced a partnership in which they will be distributing their shows via the Web. Google has also expressed interest in expanding their video search capabilities.

“Today, TV Guide can be better,” Enderle said. “But fast-forward two years from now, and you wonder if TV Guide has the resources to compete with Google long term.”

TV Guide plans to monetize this site by offering advertising within the videos it serves its users.

Update: NewTeeVee landed a beta preview of TV Guide’s Search Engine, codenamed Stingray.

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Digg’s Sports category isn’t the most popular section of the social news site and understandably so - nerds aren’t the world’s biggest sports fans. To fill the sports fan’s longing for up-to-the-minute news, as well as a smooth mixture of social networking features, comes Ballhype - and it is awesome.

The sports related news will easily bring the users in, but it’s all of the other features that will keep the user locked on to this page for hours on end. In addition to adding friends you can also join groups, which tend to be focused around specific sports, teams, or even the various conferences.

Another key feature, that is sure to see a lot of use, is the ability for users to pick winners of specific games. By jumping into the Games section you can view a list of games coming soon within each of the popular leagues (NFL, NBA, NCAA Basketball, etc). Once there, a quick click is all that is needed to place your vote as to who will be winning that particular game.

Ballhype has a lot of features for the sports fan, and that may be it’s downfall. The user interface is nice, and appears to present all of these option in an easy to use manner, but it will really come down to the normal user to determine whether they can handle all of this power or not.

If Ballhype can reign in these features and point their users in the right direction consistently, it could be come the sports news/social network to beat.

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I put this post off until the end of the day - just to try and round as many up as possible. Here’s a rundown of announcements from today that we have identified as fiction:

Google’s GMail Paper allows you to send paper copies of your email to anyone and TiSP turns your toilet into a WiFi hotspot.

Yahoo launches the Underground. There’s not a real explanation of what this sites’ intent is and the it looks like as if was designed by a blind paraplegic. Pete Cashmore has pointed out some comments that might make this announcement a fact - for the sake of people payed to do design work, we hope this is fiction.

Eventful switches to an all Twitter powered back-end. The Eventful folks have already claimed this April Fools’ joke but just in case you were wondering - try to visit Twitter’s site and time how long it takes to load. Now, who in their right mind would power anything from that? It’s like running your car on snails in a rodent wheel.

Facebook has announced Live Poke - a service in which they actually send someone to poke your friends. The logistics of this make it an apparent joke.

Slashdot launched a new feature called Slashdottit. Of course, the thanks for voting takes you to a new page (not very user friendly) and the text is… well, it clearly makes fun of digg.

I’m sure you all have spotted others - be sure to point them out in the comments.

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