Over the weekend, a new venture from the co-founders of YouTube went live. Sort of.

Along with a static home page featuring the tagline “Discover & Create Beautiful Magazines,” the company shared the following tantalizing Facebook status update and tweet ahead of Amsterdam’s The Next Web conference, where the Pinterest-slash-paper.li-like App is scheduled to be officially unveiled:

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In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler chats with Jux CEO Ted Metcalfe. Jux is a personal publishing platform that allows users to create immersive, full-screen collections of photos, videos, and words. The startup says it’s like blogging without all of the crap.

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Also, find out who’s hiring on the Mediabistro job board.

After serving as president and chief executive officer of Guitar Hero, as well as COO at Yahoo, Dan Rosensweig switched to the task of building out college textbook rental service and student network chegg.com. The Santa Clara headquartered firm now boasts over 500 employees and has warehouses in Pasadena, San Francisco, Utah, Oregon and Kentucky.

One of Rosensweig’s investors is Ashton Kutcher, front and center in a recent LA Times article by Andrea Chang about the increasing intersection of celebrities and tech startups. The chegg.com president and CEO explained how he interacts with the Two and a Half Men star:

Rosensweig said Kutcher occasionally visits the startup’s headquarters, recently meeting with the product team for four hours. One Friday afternoon, Kutcher sent an email saying he had spent a couple of hours on the site and had put together a lengthy “series of notes” on his ideas for improvements.

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The eXiled is on the verge of launching its new media transparency project, aimed at exposing the “conflicts-of-interest and corruption in the media and among our major ‘thought leaders’ and ‘independent voices.’” They’re calling the site S.H.A.M.E–Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics. The eXiled’s Yasha Levine put up a preview dossier of The Atlantic‘s resident Randian Meghan McArdle–who, incidentally, just got into a bizarre argument in the comment section of Julian Sanchez‘s blog, in which she essentially argued that prosecutors shouldn’t bring charges against George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case because they might lose. Wouldn’t want to squander taxpayer money in pursuit of justice, now, would we?

Anyway, Levine claims he has the goods on dozens of prominent U.S. journalists who take money from various think tanks and corporate sponsors in exchange for slanted coverage. Can’t wait to see who makes the list. Although we have a few guesses who might be on there.

In the final part of our three-part “Media Beat” interview with Jonah Peretti, the internet entrepreneur talks about launching The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be a big success,” Peretti admits, remembering the days leading up to the launch of The Huffington Post. “A friend of mine asked me if he should invest, and I was like ‘I’m not sure’… I didn’t really want to risk my friend’s money.”

He also offers advice for those wanting to launch their own startup, explaining that entrepreneurs shouldn’t worry about what tech blogs are covering.

Part 1: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: ‘Our Reporters Are Doing the Kind of Work Reporters Love to Do’

Part 2: Jonah Peretti On What It Means To Go Viral

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Riding on the heels of some major investigative journalistic accomplishments, California Watch is making a move to expand its reach to a younger audience. A much, much younger audience. The site has a new children’s section in the works.

Writes Cal Watch’s Ashley Alvarado:

Wee ones will be able to color our “Ready to Rumble” book on earthquake safety right on the site; parents can order or download a copy for home use. Plus, we’ll launch an occasional series of videos featuring Sunny, the California Watchdog, as he helps children understand the issues we report on, like lead in jewelry and the need for clean drinking water.

Looks like when they say “children” they mean children. The site is currently holding a vote to determine the name of the new section. It’s down to Junior Watchdogs, Watchdog Kids and Sunny & Friends. Vote here.

Leila Khalil owns a leading specialized PR boutique firm and blogs about her activities in the celebrity wedding and special events world for the Huffington Post. All of which came in handy when sister Kellee Khalil last year decided to launch wedding photo website lover.ly.

Per an item about Kellee’s efforts in Business Insider, the site is a Pinterest-like destination where users can view wedding photos aggregated from more than two dozen blogs and browse-purchase items shown. Next month, lover.ly will start selling ads across those partnered blogs:

Using her older sister’s contacts, Kellee was able to recruit the initial bloggers for her network. Her sister, of course, was the first on board with her blog Inspired by This. Now lover.ly is a sizable network with 1.8 million uniques and 10 million monthly page views.

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Google has decided to consolidate its Google Music, Google Books and Android Market online properties under a single banner: Google Play. The new digital superstore launched today.

As TechCrunch notes, Google had spent loads of time and energy in recent months trying (unsuccessfully) to brand Android Market. But Google simply has too many digital items to shop outside the smartphone realm. The consolidation has the potential to put Google on par with iTunes. Interestingly, though, unlike iTunes, Google Play is cloud-based. Meaning content can be accessed from any device without the need to clog up space on your hard drive.

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Juntoboxfilms.com, a collaborative film studio and social media platform, gets its name from the American Revolution days. “Benjamin Franklin formed what he called the Junto Society, which consisted of a diverse group of people committed to self-improvement, their community and the aid of others,” senior vice president of digital Rachael McLean tells FishbowlLA. “This is the inspiration behind the name of our company.”

Helping lead this namesake, public-voted 21st century indie film revolution will be Oscar winning actor Forest Whitaker, who was formally announced today as company co-chairman. Inspired by social gaming technology, juntoboxfilms.com will invest a total of $2.5 million in five films this year. They are also hosting a special pre-SXSW digital mixer at their offices in Santa Monica tonight, in partnership with Digital LA.

“We are currently privately funded by individual investors,” McLean explains. “All films are different with the budgeting requirements. The funding will be distributed depending on what the actual film is and the story, that way we aren’t locked into a set amount [per film].”

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In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler meets with piictu founder Jonathan Slimak. Piictu is a mobile app that allows people to collaborate using pictures.

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