If you watched The Grammys last night, you might have seen a new commercial for Google+ called “New Dad”. I was doing dishes at the time and wasn’t watching the TV, but listened. The commercial starts out with a male voice describing how he took a bazillion pictures of his new baby and how when he lost his phone he thought all of those pictures were gone.

My immediate thought was “Is this a commercial for Apple’s iCloud?”. Nope, it’s a Google+ commercial touting the auto-upload feature of its app, which as this commercial describes, could be an absolute lifesaver.

Google’s television ads are getting better and better, taking a page out of Apple’s book when it comes to making the human element more important than the actual technology behind its features. According to Google’s Bradley Horowitz, the story is true:

Instant Upload has already saved my own precious photos numerous times..

This commercial is really moving. Especially since it’s based on a true story from one of our team mates.

Here’s the new commercial:

While I’m not saying that Google is ripping off anyone, even the fact that these commercials get their own names is reminiscent of Apple. Two new Siri ads just hit television screens, both offering up how Siri makes our lives better. With Facebook yet to make a consumer splash over the airwaves, Google seems to be taking the opportunity to let people know why Google+ could be a service for them.

Could the “That’s a plus.” marketing campaign make a big difference for Google’s budding social network? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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.

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.

Google has been rolling out promos on TV and web for Google+, and they’re actually kind of cute. This one is no exception.

In it, former NBA players Bill Walton, Kenny Smith, Spero Dedes, Steve Kerr and Jon Barry use a Google+ Hangout to discuss YouTube clips of people playing basketball in their back yard. It’s actually hilarious.

The spots are really smart because they serve as an entertainment tutorial for those not on the service yet. Showing Google+ in action, with former NBA stars, is bound to get the attention of people who only know about Facebook when it comes to social networking.

Of course, the Google+ team just announced that the NBA has embraced the service, in a big way.

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

Apple has been a runaway train since its release of the iPod. People from 10-70 years old are carrying some sort of Apple device in their pockets these days.

Remember when you got your first iPhone? Taking the first generation iPhone of your pocket was magical for some, people would come up to you and ask to touch it. It’s true. Apple has stood for something magical for a long time. Steve Jobs was a big part of that, but its simplistic design and ability to lead the customer with a deep pass has kept the company in the game.

The iPhone 4S is an unfortunate release for the company. Unfortunate not because the device isn’t great, but unfortunate that the passing of its leader and headaches around patents have stalled out the excitement that comes along with its telephony-changing device. The phone has a great camera, a great new voice feature in Siri, yet people aren’t as excited as they used to be.

Why is that?

The reason why the “excitement” doesn’t seem to be what it used to is that the device is now accessible to most Americans. With Sprint and Verizon now carrying the device, it’s no longer a parlor trick to slide and unlock your phone in public. We’re waiting for the “one more thing”, as Apple has trained us to do.

How can Apple remain magical? These three markets will keep the company in the driver’s seat for a long time to come.

Mobile is the hub

Microsoft focused on the home. Bill Gates and company told us that the home was the core of computing, data sharing, and entertainment. This is no longer true, and Apple is in a position to take hold of the idea that one device can control an entire household and lifestyle.

Steve Jobs realized very early on that a happy life isn’t one chained to a computer. A happy life with technology doesn’t rely on a large hard drive attached to a network of devices in your living room.

Mobile is the future, plain and simple. If you aren’t doing it already, all of the important data you collect doesn’t happen in your home. The things you see, touch, and hear all happen while you’re outside of your home. Your friends at work tell you about a new show or ask you if you saw that big pass in the football game the night before.

Your mobile device is your hub. You enter information in, and sit back and watch once you get home. That’s not to say that a TV shouldn’t be the focus for Apple, but it’s not what controls your life.

The iPhone 5 will have to be the most powerful device you’ve ever held in your hand.

Gaming

It’s time for Apple to get serious about gaming at home. The iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad are great gaming devices. But the games you see on the app store are for small appetites and passing moments. Immersive gaming experiences don’t exist on iOS as of yet. What is Apple waiting for?

Playing a game on the train, and then picking it up on my TV is an experience that is needed. Microsoft has done one thing well in the past five years, and it came from the Xbox team. The Xbox platform has grown by leaps and bounds, letting you do more and more in the home. But once I leave my house, I have to think about coming home and playing Xbox. Why should I have to wait?

How can Apple nail gaming? Perhaps it’s that TV we heard that Mr. Jobs “cracked”. Perhaps it’s upping the ante on the existing Apple TV and letting us use apps.

Television

Mobile to home information transfer and gaming needs one more thing. A connected television with the horse power to run the best software in the world. Remember, Apple started out as a hardware company and has morphed into a company nearly perfecting both hardware and software. Microsoft started out as a software company and has embraced hardware with its phones and gaming device. The two companies have gotten to the same point in two very different paths.

What is usually the centerpiece of your living room other than pictures of your family? The television. Big ones, with features. Apple can and will get into the television game. But when? The company has beautiful monitors, so it knows how to create displays. It has a beautiful OS that can sit on any device. Going from mobile to home is the future.

The Apple TV will let you pick up where you left off. While you’re at work, on your mobile device, and on the way home, your Apple TV will be sitting there connected to the internet. The television will watch what you do, read what you read, and think what you think. It’s just a pretty monitor, after all.

You will no longer have to rely on Netflix to suggest movies for you. Your world around you, and the actions you take within that world will tell your entertainment device what you want to watch.

A mobile Apple device will be your remote to the world. Guaranteed.

Mobile is the difference, though. The TV has to compliment what you do when you’re not watching it. Microsoft wanted the TV to run your life, while Apple should build the TV to make your life better.

Can Apple stay magical? Of course it can, because it’s one of the few companies that ever became magical in the first place.

PBS has announced that the station will air an hourlong Steve Jobs documentary entitled “One Last Thing” on Wednesday November 2nd at 10pm ET.

The documentary will feature interviews with many of Steve Jobs’ colleagues and friends that span his career and beginnings at Apple, NeXT, Pixar, and his eventual return to Apple as its CEO.

The most interesting artifact that will surface during the airing of “Steve Jobs – One Last Thing” is a never before seen interview with Steve Jobs.

PBS had this to say about the event:

In a never-before-broadcast interview from 1994, Jobs expounds on his philosophy of life: “You tend to get told that the world is the way it is, but life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact; and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you … Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Also interviewed for “One Last Thing” was Steve Wozniak, Ross Perot, Walt Mossberg, will.i.am, and Dean Hovey, who was the designer of the original mouse for Apple.

The Steve Jobs biography was released this week, and the ups and downs, triumphs, and heartache of Steve Jobs’ past are being told online and offline piece by piece.

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.