You may be wondering, Why isn’t it called BeltwayHype? Or PoliticalHype? We’ll be rolling out new sites with some frequency, and the the blips suffix will make more sense as the portfolio comes together. For now, enjoy the newest addition to the family and let us know if you have any feedback or, for you closet political pundits, if you’d like us to add your blog.

And your existing BallHype/ShowHype user name and password will work on BeltwayBlips.

What changes around here? Not much… BallHype and ShowHype are still the places to go for sports and entertainment news, and Jason, Erin, Howie and Ziller are still doing the same thing as before, except now we’re getting a paycheck. We’re also hiring, so if you’re a software engineer or editor, send us a note.

We know BallHype and ShowHype wouldn’t be what they are today without support from many of you. We are appreciative of every story posted (unless you’re a venetian blinds manufacturer), comment, link and widget. Thank you!

Pick the winner of each game and answer other questions related to the Finals, and you could win an autographed Zach Parise jersey from Versus. Yes, we know he’s not playing in the Finals this year. Is it enough to say that he played last year? And he’s recently been named an alternate captain of the 2008 U.S. Men’s National Team in the 72nd annual International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship. All in all, a darn good prize for answering 18 questions correctly.

You have until the start of Game 1 to make or edit your picks. In the event of a tie, the person who finished their picks first, wins.

Make your picks now.

UPDATE: Congratulations, tbuchalski, you’re the big winner, thanks to the incredibly prescient (or lucky) pick that the Detroit Redwings would outscore the Detroit Tigers at least four times on the days when they both played.

You make the picks, you set the odds. Just before tipoff of Game 1, the odds will be frozen based on the number of people entering the contest and the picks they’ve made. At the end we’ll tally up the points and award the winner an iPod touch. For the uninitiated, it’s like an iPhone but without the phone. What’s left you ask? Movies, music, photos, and WiFi internet for email, maps, and more.

Two quick reminders before you go stampeding for your brackets… First, you can run this contest with your friends by creating a BallHype Group. Just select this as one of the games you want us to track in your group’s settings. Second, in the event of a tie, the winner will be the person with the higher NBA playoffs game picks score – so don’t forget to make your weekly game picks.

Fill out your 2008 NBA Playoffs Bracket.

And now, cue the theme music for a walk down memory lane… Since we’re computer geeks, we’ll throw in a few 1’s and 0’s.

April 2007 - BallHype launched our public beta on baseball’s opening day, after two months of closed beta testing with a couple hundred users.

May - The first high-volume story to grace BallHype was the video of Baron Davis dunking on Andre Kirilenko, which later won the Posterization of the Year award.

June - Blog claiming begins to take hold, with 180 claimed blogs by the end of the month. Today half of the tracked BallHype blogs have been claimed by their owners.

July - kcudah posted his 1,000th story to BallHype. He’s now at 4249 stories, and our next top contributor, ric-s, has posted 3020. We’re hugely grateful to them and to all of the other fans who scour the internet to share breaking news and entertaining videos.

August - Our mission is to make it easy for users to get to the best sports (and entertainment) content on the web. In August, we marked the 1,000,000th click from BallHype to another sports web site.

September - 100,000th story posted to BallHype. We allow users to share articles or videos, but we also create stories automatically when our tracked blogs link to videos or stories.

October - ShowHype, our foray into the world of entertainment, launched. The top story of the day was an in-depth profile of David Simon. One of the best things about ShowHype has been the ability to track all things The Wire for the past 6 months, although Comcast On Demand (grrr) made avoiding spoilers tricky.

November - 10,000th video posted. And BallHype’s beta period officially ended with a new site design that generated a bit of … ahem… discussion.

December - 1,000,000th blog post analyzed. Today we track more than 2200 sports blogs and 1300 entertainment blogs. I am now in danger of spending way too much time reading online instead of working… Wait, that is my job–nice!

January – Big news months for both sites. In sports, you had the Santana trade, the NFL playoffs, the Jazz having a bit o’ fun, and Chris Berman outtakes. In entertainment, you had breakdowns by Britney and Amy, Heath Ledger’s tragic death, and celebrity baby crazes.

February - 1,000,000th page published between BallHype and ShowHype; we upgrade to better, faster, more expensive servers.

March – 3 million page views across both sites. And what better way to end the year than with Bush’s warm reception at the Nationals’ season opener.

Thanks again to everyone who supported us this year by getting the word out, visiting the sites, and sending us feedback. We love hearing from you so keep telling us what we’re doing right and how we can improve.

Here’s to the Terrible Two’s!

Regular users know that we’ve been displaying automated story thumbnails for some time, but tonight we launched story photo upload to BallHype and ShowHype. You can upload a photo to a story that you submit or write, tag it, and the photo will appear both on the story page and in the tagged entity’s thumbnail album. The photos in the album link back to the original source, so it’s another way for sports or entertainment fans to discover new content. By mousing over the thumbnails in Lindsay Lohan’s album, for example, you get a nice roundup of the latest stories.

How it works:

When writing an original story, you can upload up to 5 images by clicking the Preview button after each upload. The first uploaded photo will serve as the thumbnail image for a story. You can then move the image around using the editing tool. If you submit a link to a published story, you may upload one photo, which will appear after the description.

After uploading, you can edit which story tags apply to the photo. Later, you can flag photos as misclassified or inappropriate from story pages or from photo albums.

By the way, if you are a Yankees fan and have spent many a drunken night convincing anyone who would listen that the 1927 Yankees were better than the 2007 Red Sox, you would be right (according to their SimMatchup tool, which is free and not part of the prize but pretty cool nonetheless).

So grease the mouse wheel and make your game picks. Best to get in shape now for March Madness, which will be soon upon us (recruit your office pool early and watch for the bracket contest on BallHype).

The rules are essentially the same as the Pop Quizzes. Correct picks count more if they are upsets (e.g., Michael Clayton for Best Picture); for more, read an example of the scoring methodology.

The lucky winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Fandango. (Puppets not included.) To motivate you all to get your significant other, coworkers, and in-laws to play, we’ll also give a $50 Fandango gift certificate to the administrator of the ShowHype Group with the most Oscar-picking participants.

Not included in this contest are the technical Oscars. I was too bored even reading the list of categories. Also omitted, although not due to lack of interest: an Oscar night drinking game.

As with Game Picks, the odds are set by the contest participants. If one person predicts P.S. I Love You to open big this weekend and everyone else goes with the crowd and votes Sweeney Todd or National Treasure, the Hilary Swank fan is in for a big payday if Johnny and Nic don’t deliver.

A couple of differences between ShowHype’s Pop Quiz and BallHype’s Game Picks…

1. Unlike sports, we don’t have regularly scheduled contests between teams in entertainment (Walk Hard vs. Sweeney Todd aside). So we’ll identify interesting match-ups ourselves on at least a weekly basis. Some of them will be straightforward box office rankings, but we’ll also quiz you on things like the next person to get voted off Survivor or which Kardashian daughter will be the first to marry then divorce Joe Francis.

2. Not all questions are worth the same number of points. There’s a Pop Quiz Factor at the end of each question, which will serve as the multiplier when we calculate the score. (Details on scoring in the FAQ.) This gives us the artistic freedom to assign bonus points to a particular question or amp up the wattage on an awards show ballot.

The makeover is courtesy of the fabulous Kelley and Linda of Pixelette Studios who also designed ShowHype. As a result, BallHype and ShowHype now look related, more like Peyton and Eli Manning instead of Kevin and Matt Dillon.