In the tradition of themed ads from Apple, such as the ones for FaceTime that featured grandparents seeing their grandkids for the first time, the company has been whipping up TV ads for the most notable feature on the iPhone 4S, Siri.

The last ad for Siri, which was holiday themed, showed Santa Claus using Siri to help him make deliveries. These latest installments appeal to two very distinct sets of potential users; musicians and travelers.

In the first ad, called “Rock God”, a budding musician uses the device to find a new guitar, play a new song, and contact bandmates via text message. The kid even tells Siri what to call him from now on:

In this ad, called “Road Trip”, a series of vignettes show the GPS capability of the iPhone 4S as travelers look for things to do in their area, as well as find gas when they’ve run out:

Apple does a fantastic job at humanizing its technology, and these new ads continue that tradition. Whether you’re on a bike trying to read a text message or stranded in the middle of nowhere, Apple hopes that its device is the one you turn to.

Today Twitter gave us some more stats to go along with the ones it had already given us. The total number of Super Bowl 46 related tweets are astronomical:

The crazy part is that those 13.7M tweets were just from during the game alone. Imagine if the company had released how many Super Bowl related tweets there were since the two teams competing in it were known.

There’s no doubt that Twitter has become a huge part of how we communicate about entertainment, even though the ads during the game itself didn’t reflect that.

What does reflect Twitter’s impact is that the network that aired the Super Bowl took to the platform to make this announcement:

NBC Sports: Super Bowl XLVI is the most-watched television program in U.S. history and the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years!

— CNBC (@CNBC) February 6, 2012

How deeply can Twitter integrate itself into pop culture and what we do every day? After yesterday’s impressive usage, and up-time, the sky seems to be the limit for the micro-messaging service. As Dick Costolo said, 2012 is the “Twitter election“, so once the Presidential debates start, keep an eye on the service for more record-breaking achievements.

Revision3, the Internet TV network, posted some hefty numbers to cap off its successful 2011.

While its flagship show Diggnation decided to end its run, the company added a myriad of YouTube talent to its stables last year including shows like Epic Meal Time, The Philip DeFranco Show, Film State, Soldier Knows Best, TechnoBuffalo, Ty’s iHelp and Nixie Pixel.

Revision3 was able to expand its revenue 53% year over year thanks to advertising from big players like Ford, Doritos, EA, Verizon, Sony, T-Mobile, Citrix, Gamestop, HTC, About.Me and Samsung.

Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback had this to say about its strong 2011:

We had another amazing year in 2011, and are looking forward to a strong 2012 with our content available anywhere and everywhere. By working with incredibly talented content creators, we have been building a stable of shows that deliver audience numbers as big, or bigger, than most cable shows. And as we look at the web video space, we continue to be the only company that monetizes web-original video at or above traditional television rates, with a current average yield per view of more than $30.

With 2011 behind Revision3, the company started off 2012 with a week that saw 9 million views during its original CES coverage. By sprinkling in over 200 pieces from the Las Vegas show into its programming, the company was able to do what it does best, which is advertising and product placement.

In addition to strong revenue and viewership, the company also deployed a video player completely in HTML5 that has helped them grow on tablets and the iOS platform, which doesn’t support flash. The company clearly understands that distributing its content with ads in place is the way to go, and Revision3 can be found on a ton of devices thanks to apps for Google TV and Roku.

Samsung is currently holding its press conference at CES, and is starting off by announcing that it will update its line of TVs with “smarter” ones.

The company is telling us that while we have many devices, the TV is the center. Samsung is promising to push boundaries and break down walls between the devices we already have.

Its “Smart TV” line will soon be able to update itself without you having to buy a new set every year, which is how we’re used to consuming brands of televisions.

Tim Baxter, President of Samsung Electronics America, discussed the companies strategy that uses the TV as the center piece, and includes content, service, and connectivity. Baxter says:

Consumers want more content, and find it more easily, with more intuitive controls

The TV that captures that approach? The Samsung ES8000, with dual-core processor that enables multitasking.

The TV set comes in sizes up to 75 inches, and finally includes an integrated camera for video conferencing. The company also says that 3D has been big for them, with 12 Million 3D Samsung TVs being sold to date, and the company plans on half of the new smarter TVs it releases to include 3D capabilities.

Be sure to read all of our CES coverage here.

CES is the land of gadgets and everyone seems to be getting into the act. Today, Ubuntu unveiled something it’s referring to as “TV for human beings’. The operating system will be free, but TV manufacturers will have to pay Canonical, the team behind the Linux-based operating system, a licensing fee to integrate it.

The too-geeky-for-mom operating system for your TV sports the following features:

• Easy integration of broadcast, online services and applications.
• Modern broadcast TV experience – search , watch, record and play.
• Millions of movies and TV shows streamed over the web on demand.
• Shared-screen experience with iOS, Android and Ubuntu devices.

The major selling point for Ubuntu’s foray into television? Simplicity. Here’s what the company has to say about the television operating system:

Viewers want entertainment, not electronics. They want to relax and enjoy the movie, not juggle remote controls.

Beautiful simplicity is the driving force behind Ubuntu TV. It integrates broadcast, time shift, online box office, personal cloud, apps and disk media experiences – all without wires, connectors or more boxes. It really is just the TV.

Here are some screenshots of the interface that probably won’t make it to mainstream users for quite some time, if at all:

It’s quite gorgeous and supports touch and gestures for its controls. The screenshots don’t do this thing enough justice though, watch the below video which will get you even more amped about the possibilities:

The success of Ubuntu’s TV project hinges on adoption from hardware manufacturers, and it has set up a page to woo potential partners. On the page it offers marketing-speak like:

Enter the Smart TV market without costs and complexities

Let’s hope it’s that easy for TV makers to start taking a look at Ubuntu TV. If anything, this might be a glimpse into the future of television which is rumored to be Apple’s next trick.

➤ Ubuntu TV

Catch up with all of our CES coverage here.

Audience participation has come a long way in television, with Twitter doing wonders for ratings and interaction. Technology are jumping on the bandwagon for this trend, and apparently successful television producers are as well.

Since the invention of the DVR, everyone is looking to the internet for advertising revenue to make up for what consumers are skipping over.

The ACTV8 platform brings an experience to iOS and Android devices that coincides with what is happening on live TV. The company is going to serve up contests, quizzes, and other interactive opportunities for viewers to capture what it’s missing with the lack of attention being paid to the original 30 second ad spot.

This is what ACTV8 founder and CEO Brian Shuster had to say about its platform:

ACTV8 represents an altogether new model for digital media creation, interaction and distribution. ACTV8 creates a world where viewers won’t skip branded messages and integration, because ACTV8 unlocks their value for consumers. We are working with the largest brands in the world to enrich their connection to the consumer and establish new relationships between their brands and their audiences

Partnering with Mark Burnett is as big as it gets in TV land, as he is the producer on the long-running ‘Survivor’ series, as well as ‘The Apprentice’.

About the partnership and what ACTV8 has to offer, this is what Burnett had to say:

It has always been my dream to create a deeper and more engaging relationship with the audiences of our shows. ACTV8 enables us to give the audience exactly what they want: interactivity, metadata, behind the scenes views, scoops and insights, social relevance and connectivity. Today’s audience brings a whole new set of expectations from the shows they connect to and embrace. ACTV8 allows our content to take a much more important and relevant position for consumption within the changing lifestyles of our viewers. This breakthrough technology serves to foster a world of “New Era TV Networks”

I’m personally not a huge TV watcher, and anything I do watch is usually streaming on Netflix or Hulu. A platform like this which turns television into more of a full-featured DVD packed with behind the scenes interviews could definitely change my mind.

➤ ACTV8

Last night I watched a Canadian slacker comedy movie called Weirdsville. Do you care? Probably not, but if you were following me on media ‘check-in’ services Miso or Get Glue you’d have known that pretty useless nugget in real-time.

Yes, for some reason that I’ve yet to fathom, I’m rather addicted to these apps – even though they don’t actually do that much yet. “Checking-in” to TV shows still feels very much like shouting into big hole in the ground. I tell everyone that I’m watching a show and… then what? I might get a virtual badge, in some cases there might be a money-off deal or real-life prize related to it but in most cases… nothing happens. However, we’re not that far from these apps becoming essential social TV guides – maybe even changing our relationship with that box in the corner of the room entirely.

Catching users’ attention after location check-ins became popular early last year, media check-ins seemed like an obvious next step. The best known of these apps, Get Glue actually allows you to check in to TV shows, movies, video games, books, music and even subjects that you’re thinking about. Miso, while restricted to TV and movies, allows you to check in to individual episodes and supports more non-US content than its rival. Meanwhile, Filmaster‘s mobile app is an interesting take on the media check-in concept, allowing users to share exactly which screening of a cinematic release they’re planning to attend.

The idea of sharing what you’re watching, seeing what your friends are watching and getting viewing recommendations back from others is still quite a way from hitting it big with users, even in the early adopter crowd. Get Glue recently hit one million users – an eighth of Foursquare’s figure – while Miso tells us it has “over 150,000″ users. So, the market’s still nascent, but over time these apps will change the way we think about our TV experience.

The future of media check-ins

Just as Foursquare and Gowalla have signed brands up to help drive more users and revenue to their services, Miso and GetGlue are doing the same. For example, 35 major networks, 10 major movie studios and 5 major music labels and management companies have offered rewards, both virtual and real, to GetGlue users. That said, with just a million users it’s still a long way from being what you might call ‘mainstream’.

Media check-ins are set to bloom into something bigger and more exciting over time, though. If these apps can achieve critical mass in the short-to-medium term, well be looking at a world in which a quick glance at our phones will tell us exactly what our friends recommend that we watch right now. While Twitter offers a certain amount of this functionality – especially during big shows that capture the imagination of the Twitterverse – you wouldn’t want to tweet out every show you were watching. A dedicated, social TV app is far better suited to that function, with the ability to link to Twitter if you choose.

Making checking in easier

One barrier to wider adoption of these apps could well be the fact that it’s such trouble to actually check in. While you’re relaxing at home with a movie, do you really want to have to tap the title of the show you’re watching into an app? What if the show’s great and you don’t know what it is? How do you check in then? We’ve seen a couple of interesting solutions to these problems emerge in the past couple of months.

IntoNow can tell what you’re watching from a short audio sample. Essentially, it’s Shazam but for TV shows. Meanwhile, a new Israeli startup, TVtak, allows you to take a picture of the TV and uses image recognition to work out what you’re viewing. Both technologies have their problems at present. IntoNow requires a relatively long 10 seconds of audio from the TV, which might be tough during noisy, chatty, family viewing sessions. TVtak on the other hand, can only recognise shows on channels that it is currently monitoring server-side. While that makes image recognition speedy, it does limit the audience for this service which is set to launch first in Israel before expanding into Europe and the US over time.

It’s when our TVs become well-developed app platforms that media check-ins can really come of age though. Once you can run apps on your TV, the option to ‘Scrobble’, Last.fm-style, your viewing becomes available. Suddenly, the benefits of social TV become automated. No need for your friends to remember to open up an app, search for a show and “check-in” – the whole process will be automatic. Stuck for what to watch? Click a button on your remote control and suddenly you’ll see what all your friends are watching. Social recommendation will be entirely integrated into the viewing experience and the conscious “check-in” might become extinct

Still, that hypothetical situation is a long way down the line, and auto-sharing may never take off. Would you really want to share that you were watching adult movies late at night on the family TV? As a less extreme example, you may have great taste in American serial dramas but do I want to know every time your kids are watching Justin Bieber concerts on the same TV?

Another point to consider is rewards. If TV shows can flash up rewards on the screen purely for watching a show, will it change what we choose to watch? “Stay with us after the break for the latest episode of a our terrible, unwatchable gameshow and be entered into a prize draw to win a car!”

Then there’s the elephant in every social room – Facebook. The social media giant acquired Hot Potato, another ‘check in to anything’ service, in August last year. While Facebook Places hasn’t yet become the overnight, runaway Foursquare-killing success many predicted, it’s safe to assume that Facebook will be looking to expand its checkins into media over time.

Whatever happens, it’s clear that the fun, if a little useless, media checkin apps we have today are just the tip of an iceberg that could well change the way we experience media forever.

The world is evolving far too quickly for us to keep up with it.

Formerly our main forms of entertainment were spending time with family and playing with the dog, but in our advanced digital age, we’re all glued to our flat-screen TVs in high definition, our laptop computers that surf the web at lightning speed and our mobile phones that are almost like handheld computers that also fit in your pocket and make calls.

Let’s take some time to reflect on the beauty that was traditional media and how all that’s changed in our new media world.

Before big blogs, you only read the NY Times

News that was hot off-the-wire was the only news that you knew. It was simple. You looked at the big headlines, read a bit into the details, and didn’t worry too much about all the other things in life.

Now, we’re overflowing with information, reading blogs with added commentary to today’s news, understanding what’s happening in the world more in-depth because information not only contains announcements, but analysis.

Before YouTube, there was TV

You anxiously waited for your Prime Time television shows to come on, and you never missed an episode because it would be a long time and an arduous task to make up the lost airing. It was simple, you watched TV from 8 – 10pm every weeknight.

Now you’re on YouTube, watching viral video after viral video from when you get out of work until dinner time, then after dinner time, you’re back on to watch more videos until it’s time to pass out at 1 or 2 am.

Before Netflix, you had the movie theatre

Going to the theatres was one of the nicest pleasures on a Friday night. You take your date or a few friends and get ready to get sucked into 2 hours of non-stop, audio and visual entertainment that only a real movie theatre could provide with its surround sound, large screen projection and overpriced and over greased popcorn.

Now, with movies on-demand, having the ability to stream top flicks and borrow unlimited amounts of DVDs without late charges, you’re more than comfortable staying in bed to watch a movie than travel to the theatre and spend $10 on one film ticket.

Before the Kindle, you had paperback books

Remember that nice shelf of books you used to have? The same one with all the classics your father read to you when you were a child, with the books that got you through those boring high school years spent at home, and even those that you get comfort in curling up to some nights after a long, long day of work.

Now, when space is becoming a limited resource and buying titles off of your Kindle is quick, easy and cheap, you can’t help but take advantage of the fact that you can access thousands more books than your apartment could handle, and thousands more books than you can physically read.

Before Digg, Reddit and even StumbleUpon, you asked for a trusted friend’s opinion or waited for someone to email you a useful link

You loved when a friend shared something useful. It was like a nice treat at the end of your day when you looked at your personal email inbox and saw a friendly message from your trusted friend sharing an interesting article to a story that you otherwise would not have seen.

Now, links and such are flying every which way, and you’re prone to click anything you see with a big, eye-catching headline. While our abundance of information has been such a great thing, sometimes you get the longing for more simplicity.

This digital age has surely changed the way we consume media, and clearly has its pros and cons. But it’s at least nice to look back every once and a while and think about the way things used to be, even if we decide to continue moving away from the traditional methods.

We recently wrote about Clearspring, an online content sharing network, as one of the “10 D.C. Start-Ups You Need to Know About.” Clearspring’s meal ticket, the “AddThis” button that you’ve undoubtedly seen on numerous blogs and websites, has reached 1 billion global monthly users and is used by everyone from The White House to the Dalai Lama to the British Monarchy.

Publishers like ABC, AOL, Demand Media, MTV, MySpace, NBC use the AddThis button to distribute and track digital content such as links, widgets, videos, and photos to social networks, bookmarking sites, blogs, and other web services. This morning they announced a new analytics tool for their AddThis sharing platform that helps online publishers better understand their audience’s interests, so they can make better editorial decisions that drive more users and traffic to their sites. Clearspring will use their new tool to leverage the 1 billion global users and will provide publishers with an audience-based report that can be viewed within their existing analytics dashboard.

The technology underlying their new analytics feature is the “Implicit Interest Graph,” which helps to create a digital map of the connection between people and the things they care about most. Unlike the Interest Graph created by Facebook, interests in the AddThis graph are determined by actual user behavior rather than by a user declaring interest by ‘liking’ something. Moreover, interests are displayed by levels of intensity.

“People’s interests are not binary. We do not just like or dislike something. For example, I don’t just ‘like’ movies about comic books – I love them. That difference is priceless,” says Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar. “Using this new platform, we can understand interests more granularly. It’s like going from a black and white TV set to color.”

For more information, watch this video of today’s announcement.

Clearspring, which launched in 2006, is currently ranked #1 by comScore.

2011 looks set to be the year that Internet-connected TVs become truly mainstream.

There’s a lot more potential here than just downloading movies and watching Hulu on a big screen, though. Just like they changed the way we use our phones, apps could transform how interact with our TVs forever.

One of the benefits of platforms like Google TV and the iOS-powered Apple TV is that they open up the possibility of apps that could allow us to interact with, and even influence the shows we watch in completely new ways. Here are just some of the apps that could potentially emerge in the next couple of years.

Twitter and TV, united at last

When a big TV show is on air, you can be sure that legions of Twitter users are uniting around a hashtag to comment on the action. For TV talent shows and sporting events alike, the ‘Twitter backchannel’ has become an important part of the experience.

Today’s Twitter apps for TV are very basic, allowing you to read tweets and post your own, but there’s no interaction with the show you’re watching. Imagine a Twitter app that knows what you’re watching and only shows current tweets about it. You’d be able to participate yourself directly from the app, tying the ‘online peanut gallery’ idea directly into you viewing.

For people who find the Twitter backchannel as entertaining as the show itself, that would be covered even if you were watching the show at a later date. You’d be able to view the Twitter commentary replayed as it happened at the original time of transmission.

Facebook re-imagined for the living room

With the TV at the heart of many families’ time spent together, it makes sense that the TV could be a place to share the latest news from far-away friends and relatives. Imagine Grandma watching the news in Oklahoma when a notice pops up that you’ve shared photos with her from your trip to Europe. She browses through them on-screen and records a video message to you using her TV’s built it camera, wishing you well for the journey home.

You then receive her message on your mobile phone in the Facebook mobile app that allows you to send text messages, pictures and video to the family TV whenever you choose.

This kind of facility is already available via Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and the like.they’d However, the concept needs streamlining and carefully redesigning to make true sense in the living room. Let’s face it, if anyone’s going to get this right, it will probably be the king of social, Facebook.

What to watch next? Ask your friends

Services like Miso and Get Glue allow you to share what you’re watching on TV with your friends in real time. It’s a great way of getting viewing recommendations based on what other people are watching. However, because these apps aren’t integrated into your TV they’re a pain to use. You have to actively pick up your phone and type in the show that you’re watching.

If you could simply have a Miso-type service running on your TV all day as you watch you’d be able to easily share what you watching and when you’re stuck for what to watch next, just bring up the app for some inspiration from your friends. Perfect!

You can see the beginnings of this in Facebook’s partnership with TV guide website Clicker. When you visit Clicker.com and link up your Facebook account, the site recommends shows to you based on what your friends have ‘Liked’ on Facebook. The more you and your friends click the ‘Like’ button on content around the web related to TV shows, the better the recommendations. Imagine this idea extended from Web pages to your actual TV and you can see how powerful social recommendations could be in helping you choose what to watch next.

‘DVD extras’ for every show

Imagine if TV producers could enhance their shows with the kinds of ‘Extras’ you get on a DVD. A tap of a button while you watch could access Director and cast commentaries, storyboards, pop-up trivia notes and could all be accessible, providing extra value to viewers. Sports events could be enhanced with interactive stats packages, showing how players and teams are performing. The possibilities are endless.

Answer all your burning questions, instantly

We all have those “What’s she been in before?” and “What’s the song in the background?” moments when watching TV. While we can easily look these up online, integrated apps will make things even simpler.

An IMDB app will know exactly what you’re watching so a full cast list with biographies and pictures will instantly be available on screen for you. Meanwhile, if you’re not sure what a song is, there’d be no need to hold your phone up to the screen so that Shazam could analyse it, the Shazam app in your TV would be able to tell you in seconds, with a link to buy and download the song if you choose there and then. At the In The City music conference this year Shazam confirmed that such an idea was in the works.

Novelty apps

Back when Apple’s iPhone App Store first launched, novelty apps were the first to chime with the public at large. Fart apps and ‘Pretend you’re drinking a glass of beer’ apps became overnight hits as people got to grips with a whole new way to think of their phones. Could the same happen with TVs?

Imagine “Turn the current show into a cartoon” filters, a magnifying glass app that gives people on-screen big heads, a ‘Put Homer Simpson into every show’ app… oh, and a ‘Family Guy’ soundboard to play with during the news  - someone’s bound to do that. , the possibilities are endless.

Read more about the future potential of TV apps here and here.