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Seemingly, Smart TV is a rebrand of LG’s NetCast system—an internet-connected TV service with a home dashboard, displaying apps and widgets. Considering NetCast offered Skype, YouTube, Netflix, VUDU, and Yahoo Widgets, we shall expect more of the same.

Smart TV will be launching in early 2011, but there’s already a peripheral available today that will be able to support it—the Magic Wand remote, which we saw back at CES. LG described it then as “mirroring a “Wii-like” experience,” and by the looks of LG’s press release (below), it sounds like they intend on stepping on even more of Nintendo’s turf. Would you use the remote to color in a coloring book, or show you yoga positions? Maybe if you were too cheap to buy a Wii.

BERLIN, Sep. 1, 2010 – At this year’s IFA, LG Electronics (LG) is unveiling its debut contribution to the exciting new realm of SMART TVs with a set that mixes seamless connectivity to the Internet with exceptional ease of use. With an easy Home Dashboard, intuitive User Interface and User eXperience among other TV applications, LG intends to show just how convenient its SMART TV can be.

LG’s SMART TV exhibit at IFA features four main concepts: Easy, Fun, More and Better. As the name suggests, Easy is about convenience of use, which LG achieves through a convenient Home Dashboard that lets viewers use applications and access a range of premium content all on a single screen. Just like an internet portal, Home Dashboard helps viewers select their favorite content instantly without having to browse numerous websites.

At IFA 2010, LG will be making things even simpler still with its Magic Motion Remote Control, which enables viewers to find the content they want by merely pointing the controller at a list of onscreen options and clicking a single button. Used in conjunction with the Home Dashboard, the remote serves up a truly intuitive interface and experience, making the SMART TV LG’s most user-friendly home entertainment product yet.

Focusing on lifestyle-oriented content, Fun shows how LG’s SMART TVs can deliver entertainment value in real life through TV applications. Use the Magic Motion Remote Control to fill in the pages of a coloring book app or learn about first aid through simulated emergency situations. Alternatively, they can pick up helpful tips for relaxation and exercise through a yoga app.

More is about consuming digital content and using Media Link to transfer even more content to the SMART TV. Besides instant access to online videos and images, users can easily upload things they’ve created themselves. And with a smartphone, leaving the house doesn’t mean missing one’s favorite program because content can be delivered wirelessly. Whether connecting to an iPad, PCs, personal media players or home theater systems, LG is expanding the reach of entertainment to every part of people’s lives.

Showing how it will make TV Better, LG is showcasing its quick links to premium content that TV viewers are most likely to use, such as the YouTube, Maxdome, Orange and MLB. On this solid foundation, LG is building a vast selection of online content as it secures deals with some of the internet’s top service and content providers. LG is focusing on forming partnerships with major content providers for maximum entertainment value, including the possibility of Pay TV.

“With the introduction of our advanced SMART TV, LG is able to offer a ‘Total Home Entertainment Solution’ enabling consumers to enjoy practically any digital content on any smart device,” said Simon Kang, President and CEO of LG Home Entertainment Company. “For consumers who want full control over how and where they get their entertainment with maximum ease and comfort, the LG SMART TV solution may be all they need.”

LG’s advanced and easy SMART TV will launch in early 2011.

It is the springtime of my loving, the second season I am to know… I can’t get these lyrics out of my head—what’s the song name again? I’d probably not find out easily if it weren’t 2010.

PS: Yes, I remembered the song title just as I started to type a Google search query. [Make Use Of via Geeks Are Sexy]

If a video drops on YouTube and no one watches it, does it make a lolz? That’s one koan that’s been solved, thanks to this site that curates nothing but unwatched uploads. And trust me, these deserve an audience.

Of course, these unloved gems don’t stay that way long, not after they’ve been outed as orphans. Nor should they! Who would want to deprive the world of the frantic gum-chewing of Jashon980:

Or Bieber Fever in its natural habitat:

Or… this guy:

Thank goodness ZeroViews is out there, doing the lord’s work, bringing these treasures to light. You can keep your David at the Dentist. I’ll be just fine with the lonesome weirdo auteurs. [ZeroViews via Geekosystem]

Dan Brown’s life is out of control, and he’s nervous. Dan 3.0, his new Web TV show, will put his day-to-day life in the hands of his fans. But that’s all part of the plan, and it’s very under control.

The notion behind Dan 3.0 is that “groups make better decisions,” he says. (About what? That’s up to the group.) Using an online “decision engine,” Dan is outsourcing his “decisions” by letting participants suggest and vote on daily tasks. Each day, he says, he’ll do the most popular task. So far this has taken him to the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska to high-five strangers. And it’s taken him on a walk to the nearest city, Walton.

But don’t worry, Dan says, the big tasks are coming; he and Internet-television network Revision3 just need more time to plan. Then they can focus, for instance, on one of Dan’s favorite topics: his girlfriend. She might get a birthday visit from Dan—if his viewers want it. And since “my viewers care about me,” Dan says, chances are they’ll give him the task he wants. Now who’s controlling whom?

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There are still 361 days left to see. As of Friday afternoon, there are four episodes of the show, which debuted August 1. After the pre-show ad and the logos for Revision3 and sponsor SquareSpace, a bed-haired Dan, wearing what seems to be his only T-shirt, starts talking. He’s in his studio (decorated with art sent in by fans), and he’s chatting away with his practiced self-assured but self-conscious delivery.

This self-referentiality seems to be constant, even when the task of the day begins. Dan spends the task talking about doing it while doing it, talking about talking about doing it while doing it, and so on. But, as he notes, “It’s not about getting a whole lot of footage—it’s more about capturing the moment.” So, following his own advice, he captures the show’s meta-moment—existing as a show—as he reflects on the project.

Perhaps Dan has reason for his ego, however cloaked in young-adult angst it may be. He began building a strong Internet fan base in 2007, when he posted an instructional YouTube video on how to solve the Rubik’s cube. Three years later, the video has almost 16 million views. In the meantime, Dan has posted videos on everything from gay marriage (which he supports) to, in the following video, Crocs (which he says “might just be the most important issue I ever talk about”).

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Dan is one lucky vlogger, and he knows it: “I make videos talking about what I want to talk about when I want to talk about it, and it provides for me.”

Dan gains from vlogging, and his viewers are supposed to gain from watching and suggesting tasks. But besides a chance to influence the quotidian, yet artificial, life of a 20-year-old, what else do they stand to gain? “I want everyone who participates to be happy about the whole experience,” he says. “I want to push the envelope as to what it means to have a new media relationship with an audience.”

Indeed, it’s quite the transitional period for visual entertainment, as television and Internet share and influence each other’s content more than ever. As Dan says, “There’s so many new tools being invented everyday that increase the capacity for interaction.” His decision engine—the *** yet incomplete structure for a year of his life—is supposed to be one of those tools.

Dan 3.0 is still nascent, so it’s hard to tell if viewers will continue to interact with it the way Dan wants. According to Revision3, the website’s traffic doubled on the day the show launched. And there are more than 5,700 tasks posted on the site.

Hype, of course, is at least one of the reasons driving the show’s initial popularity. But Dan’s *** vlogs have been doing well for years, and there’s somehow never a shortage of time to spend watching strangers on screens. Seventeen years ago, in his E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, David Foster Wallace offered some prescient explanation:

If we want to know what American normality is—what Americans want to regard as normal—we can trust television. For television’s whole raison is reflecting what people want to see. It’s a mirror.

Or, as Dan says, “I think that a lot of the appeal of watching people’s day-to-day lives is just people are curious as to how other people live their day-to-day lives.”

But pretty soon we start to turn inward, Wallace warned: “We spend enough time watching, pretty soon we start watching ourselves watching.”

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

Trying their hand at conjuring up vintage advertising for Facebook, YouTube and Skype, Brazilian advertising firm Moma created these ads for news*** Meio & Mensagem. Don Draper could only dream of their marketing power. [AdsOfTheWorld via Urlesque via Gawker]

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Whether you don’t have the time or just can’t stand to sit through another 15- to 30-second ad before your YouTube video loads, reader DannyBR points out a *** solution.

If you ever want to skip a commercial on YouTube when a video starts, refresh the page and the video will start. I always do this 1 to 2 seconds into the ad and it doesn’t play again.

It’s similar to the one long commercial tradeoff you get for refreshing a Hulu page—you just get to avoid the commercial altogether. It’s not a brand new trick, but definitely a potential time- or sanity-saver.