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Writer and producer Joss Whedon has a mixed track record when it comes to TV shows. He was the creative genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the most popular shows of the past decade or so (as well as the spinoff Angel), but at the same time, he was also the creator of Firefly, which never really took off and was cancelled despite an online protest (although it did spawn the movie Serenity).

Now, Whedon is experimenting with an online comedy/sci-fi/musical called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which stars former Doogie Howser lead Neil Patrick Harris as a shy superhero and Firefly star Nathan Fillion as the doctor's arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer.

The first episode of the series was posted on the Web yesterday morning, and promptly crashed the site. American viewers could see it through Hulu.com, the streaming video site run by NBC, but anyone outside the United States had to either wait for the site to come back up or download the show through iTunes for $3.99.

The show's official Twitter account said the site was having technical difficulties and was working on resolving them, and added: "We love you for crashing the site." A Joss Whedon fan site had several hundred messages about the outage.

As described on the Dr. Horrible companion website, the first three episodes will be streamed on July 15, 17 and 19 - but will be viewable only until July 20, at which point fans will have to buy them through iTunes. A special DVD with all of the episodes and extras will also be available at some point, the site says.

Whedon created the Web project during the Hollywood writers strike, along with his brothers Zach and Jed, and said he financed the six-figure cost as a way of showing that there are other creative outlets apart from traditional television.

For more details and links, please see the Ingram 2.0 blog at http://www.globetechnology.com.