Popular video portal Hulu.com today announced the launch of Hulu Labs, “a place to try out experimental projects from Hulu and share your feedback while they’re still in development.”

Hulu Labs consists of four new features:

• Hulu Desktop, a downloadable application that enables what it calls a “lean-back” video watching experience from the viewer’s personal computer. The app is optimized for use with Apple or Windows Media Center remote controls (or can use simple keyboard and mouse controls). Hulu Desktop aims to simplify navigation, and customization of the viewer’s desktop page. The application is available now, but is still in beta.
• The Video Panel Designer creates “easy-to-use, embeddable widgets” that allow simple content programming and easily integrate a Hulu video player into a user’s website.
• A Time-Based Browsing feature lets the viewer sift through videos by the episodes’ original air date, with records extending back many years and up to date with current news and other programming. Viewers can search by the most popular videos from that date, or look through an alphabetical list.
• Recommendations are just what they sound like: an updated help for discovering interesting shows and movies which the viewer may not have heard of, but is likely to enjoy. Viewers can rate shows and movies and share channel preferences with Hulu, improving subsequent recommendations.