This year, the main action can be found on Grammy Live, a three-day orgy of live-streaming and social media beginning this Friday and continuing through Sunday, February 12. The events covered will include host-anchored behind-the-scenes coverage (with talent including Alison Haislip and John Norris) and video of other events leading up to the awards, including the MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute honoring Paul McCartney.

While last year, Grammy Live was powered by YouTube’s then-fledgling live-streaming service, this time the awards are working directly with CBS for interactive content, using Akamai (a AKAM) and AEG Digital Media’s internal player to deliver the live stream.

“Partnering with our network partner affords us enhanced opportunities,” Grammy Live executive producer Peter Anton said in a phone interview, such as being able to get more on-air mentions for Grammy Live programming. “It wasn’t part of our overall scheme, but this year there have been broadened opportunities through this new partnership.”

On Sunday, the live stream will follow awards attendees from their limos to the post-show after parties, with multiple camera angles available backstage during the show. Basically, any video you could possibly imagine watching will be accessible via Grammy.com and the Grammy Live iOS apps (optimized for both iPad and iPhone) for a true two- or three-screen experience — except for the actual Grammy Awards, which will only be watchable on CBS.

After the show, the Grammys will once again face the problem they had last year: actually getting the live performances from the broadcast online in a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, the issue remains the same — each performance must be individually approved for release by the artist and rights holders before the Grammys can post it, which isn’t the most efficient of processes.

“We’ve created a mechanism to deliver content almost instantly, and we hope to have most available on iTunes and Vevo right after the show, but we’re still subject to outside approval forces that we just can’t control,” Recording Academy CMO Evan Greene said in a phone interview.

While the Grammys have added an on-site opportunity to expedite getting those releases, the fact remains that if Adele isn’t happy with how she sounds next week, the Grammys won’t be able to officially release her performance.

But despite the limitations of the industry being celebrated, the Grammys are still finding ways to push digital content. A Facebook contest has given up-and-coming band The Almost Kings the opportunity to play a half-hour set on Grammy Live; a deal with Pepsi and Pandora has lead to an original video series spotlighting this year’s Best New Artist nominees.

And then there’s We Are Music, a sort of visual playlist creator powered by Rdio that allows you to combine photos and 30 second clips of music for an iTunes Visualizer-esque experience that you can then share with others (like so). “Music is a part of us. It pens our love letters. It delivers our motivational speeches…” the site says. “Now it’s time to bring your story to life.” It’s kind of cheesy. It’s also kind of true.

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Today’s case study is Syfy’s Being Human, adapted from the British series of the same name about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a house and struggling to fit into normal society. For the second season, which premiered on Jan. 16th, Syfy teamed up with Twitter to launch a dedicated account for the show, @BeingHumanSyfy, which then became the focal point of a promoted trends campaign for the show.

The concept they played with, according to Dana Ortiz, the VP of brand marketing for Syfy, was to focus the conversation online not around the show but around an idea. Thematically, the show’s second season was exploring the concept of “temptation,” the tagline from the ubiquitous billboards and bus ads being “Temptation is a beast.” So for the first 12 hours of the campaign, Twitter promoted the hashtag “#AlreadyTempted” (which also tied into post–New Year’s conversations about failing to follow through on resolutions); then, for the second 12 hours Twitter pushed the topic “#BeingHuman.”

What they discovered was that, according to Ortiz in a phone interview, “To sponsor a conversation around a theme or topic is much more meaningful.” According to data given to us by Syfy, the 24-hour campaign resulted in over a thousand new followers for @BeingHumanSyfy, with the #AlreadyTempted hashtag serving 8.7 million impressions and the #BeingHuman hashtag serving 21.1 million.

In addition, Twitter logged a 5.03 percent engagement rate for the #AlreadyTempted hashtag and an 8.75 percent engagement rate for #BeingHuman (the average engagement is between 3 and 6 percent).

Of course, Syfy’s advantage here was that the phrase “being human” also serves as a strong conversation starter; Ortiz said they would likely promote the show Warehouse 13 just with a thematic topic, not the show title.

In addition, the Syfy team launched the “tempting our influencers” campaign, for which they sent boxes to “influencers” like Perez Hilton, Bravo’s Andy Cohen and Neil Patrick Harris. The boxes contained tempting items targeted to each celebrity, with a note saying that if they resisted opening the box until Jan. 16, they would receive a larger prize, as well as a donation to the charity of their choice.

How successful the campaign might be varies. I remember seeing Harris’ initial tweets about receiving his box of temptations but had no idea that it was connected to the Being Human premiere (none of his updates mention the show by name). But it was an interesting effort to reach new audiences.

One hurdle Being Human faces in the social media realm is the fact that the original British show not only has a strong following online but also airs stateside on BBC America. Creatively, the two shows have split apart, but the fact remains that there are two shows with the same name out there. Ortiz said one way they work to keep the Syfy version separate is to focus on search, buying search terms that range from the names of the show’s characters (which are different from the British version) to topics like “Grimm” or “Snow White.” “We keep an eye on it, but we’re not looking over our shoulder,” Ortiz said.

The result of this focus on social, according to Ortiz, is a stronger performance in the ratings among the 18–34 demographic: The second season premiere was up 9 percent in that demo. “We’re constantly trying to skew a little younger than we normally do, and social is a main component of that,” Ortiz said.

Disclosure: I am currently employed by G4, which, like Syfy, is owned by NBC Universal/Comcast, but I have no interaction with other divisions of NBCU.

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Nikki Finke’s news empire launches YouTube channel

PMC, which owns digital news sites Deadline, Movieline, TVLine and Hollywood Life, has officially launched their entry in the YouTube channels initiative, Entertainment News TV (ENTV). The channel is currently updated several times daily with short news updates collated from the PMC news network, and while most of the videos are anchored by easy-on-the-eyes talent, there is one interesting exception: Famously reclusive Nikki Finke provides narration for several videos. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear Hollywood’s most notorious critic bash Ricky Gervais, now is your chance.

White Collar Brawlers get loaded on tequila

Portal A, the production company behind award-winning documentary series White Collar Brawlers, launched a new branded series for Tres Agaves Tequila. Tequila Academy, set to run eight episodes, features Brawlers stars Kai and Nate traveling through Mexico and learning about the firey liquor. Fans of Brawler‘s high-def cinematography can expect more of the same.

Do good using YouTube

YouTube has released a new playbook of best practices (link goes to PDF file) for causes and non-profits, with tips including how to involve your audience in your cause and integrate Google Checkout to ask for donations.

Teaser for viral ad goes viral

In case you’re wondering what kind of world we live in, a teaser for a new Star Wars-themed Volkswagon ad has racked up over 3.2 million views in two days on YouTube. Note: This is not the actual commercial. This was an ad about the commercial, which will premiere during the Super Bowl.

According to the YouTube description, “Keep an eye out for our 2012 Game Day commercial—it will all make sense.” What, a bunch of dogs in Star Wars costumes bark the Imperial theme? That will make sense? I look forward to whatever unique twist this idea deserves.

Speaking of Star Wars…

Emmy-winning Star Wars Uncut has been posted to YouTube as one complete two hour film, AKA “The Director’s Cut.” Director Casey Pugh, having seen every single scene, personally selected the scenes that would make for “the most entertaining experience.”

When asked about the 4:3 formatting (as opposed to 16:9), Pugh said via email that “Most people don’t have HD cameras, so from the beginning I made it clear the end film would be in 4:3. If I were to do it again in 2012, that’d probably be a different story.”

Any other news we missed? Let us know in the comments!

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The concept behind ARGs (especially versus the new catch-all term “transmedia”) is hotly debated, but the basic definition is the idea of an interactive narrative, told in real time by a team of game designers, who use anything from Twitter accounts to phone calls to objects buried at GPS coordinates as storytelling devices.

Libby first became fascinated with ARGs in 2003, and her first original creation, Sammeeeees, eventually connected her with Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried of LonelyGirl15, who brought her in as a writer and ARG specialist. “LonelyGirl was like an ARG, but without the game mechanic, and the fans who were committed 24/7 really wanted that,” Libby said in a phone interview. While more-casual followers would enjoy LonelyGirl strictly through its video content, Libby developed a larger experience for devoted fans.

After leaving LG15, Libby continued creating ARGs and interactive experiences for brands like Levi’s, Coke and Ford while also continuing to develop independent projects, including the first version of Snow Town, which ran last year.

Now Libby isn’t just continuing the Snow Town story but also developing a whole new way to tell it: an experience she calls the i-Fi App, for which she is seeking funds using a Kickstarter campaign. She describes the i-Fi app on Kickstarter as follows:

This is not an enhanced eBook or iBook. The Snow Town I-Fi App is an Immersive and Interactive Fiction (which, I guess, is actually an I-I-Fi, but let’s stick with I-Fi). The I-Fi APP will enable you to experience SNOW TOWN via your phone, tablet or computer . . . This is an engaging multi-media journey you can enter alone or with friends. SNOW TOWN has many narrative paths leading to various mind-blowing endings. Every wild, exciting SNOW TOWN adventure depends on the choices YOU make as you interact with SNOW TOWN.

For Libby, the key was to create something that would make ARGs not only more accessible to new users but also replayable, something not typically possible with ARGs due to the real-time component. ARGs can be scattered storytelling experiences; the i-Fi app, Libby says, has the potential to “take the essence of alternate reality games and centralize it.”

Snow Town, as described by Libby, focuses on a small town that is terrorized every hundred years by a pack of mischievous Snow People, your typical supernatural darkly comedic horror interactive experience. Currently Libby and two other coders are working to develop the app, with volunteer support from the citizens of Wayne, Maine, who are heavily involved in the production.

But what is really exciting about Snow Town is not just this first implementation; it’s the potential for the i-Fi app as a new tool for interactive storytellers. While still in development, Libby describes the app as a mix between an ARG and the interactive fiction apps that have been developed for the iPad. But, she says, “text is not the mechanic. It’s not a book. A tablet device is such a visual thing. Sound and video should be the main component.” Libby and her team are currently in the process of patenting the technology, and after Snow Town she hopes to use i-Fi to help other storytellers produce interactive fiction.

As of writing, the Kickstarter campaign is a bit over 25 percent funded, with just over two weeks to go; if it doesn’t succeed, though, Libby has backup plans in place. She is in discussions with several unnamed companies that might be interested in funding the project. Depending on the funding, Libby hopes to launch Snow Town by the end of April.

“I believe you could really use the I-Fi App for any genre,” Libby said. “Even a romantic comedy could work really well, where you, as you move through the experience and into the story app, fall for the main character.

“Anything can happen!”

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Searching for channels with the keyword “ESL” pulls up over 3,600 results, the vast majority of which are devoted to English-as-a-second-language instruction. Videos on topics ranging from basic pronunciation to vocabulary have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views, with popular channels like Quality English Lessons Online accumulating millions.

Because the materials are available openly, that means there’s potential for unexpected repurposing of these lessons. One example is the story of Dave Valiulis, a technical writer and Ph.D who suffered a stroke in 2008 and has since been dealing with the effects of aphasia and apraxia, which damaged his ability to access words and manipulate his mouth to speak clearly.

After completing two years of professional speech therapy, Valiulis “graduated” and was left to improve his ability to talk on his own. Initially he went looking for things related to aphasia and apraxia, with little success — but when he discovered the amount of ESL material out there, he found his options widen dramatically. “I thought, ‘Of course — this is what I need! After all, English to a person with aphasia and apraxia is like a second language,’” Valiulis wrote via email.

The channel he found most useful was Rachel’s English, which currently has over 6,500 subscribers and 2.1 million views. Rachel’s videos break down the basics of American English in a number of ways, including the exact techniques behind pronouncing letters, with specific notes about tongue placement and throat movement — which is something that those with apraxia struggle to remember.

And while Rachel does not list any formal speech therapy training in her official bio, she does make note of her musical training in multiple languages; that musical training is what Valiulis found most helpful about her videos. “Rachel’s videos are unique in that she stresses the overall rhythm and flow — the musicality — of English,” Valiulis said. “This is very helpful to me and to the person with aphasia. That’s because music mostly comes from the right side of the brain — which is the undamaged side in most aphasics.”

The ESL courses aren’t a perfect solution for aphasics, according to Valiulis: “There are plenty of topics the aren’t relevant to me in typical ESL lessons (like grammar) and there are some things I need that are not covered in ELS (like word retrieval and improving my talking speed). But there is plenty of overlap — at least with Rachel’s videos — to keep me busy!”

I spoke briefly with Valiulis on the phone, and his speech was reminiscent of someone with an extreme stutter, but he spoke clearly and wasn’t hard to understand. The effects of his training are working. So the videos are doing what they’re supposed to: Help people learn to communicate better. Which is, ultimately, the point.

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There’s a fair amount riding on the IAWTV Awards, as the show is not only a potential money-maker for the organization, but the final step in the IAWTV’s separation from the Streamy Awards, the organization that was the IAWTV’s original reason for existence and is now an independent ceremony that will be co-produced by Dick Clark Productions.

But looking at the nominees, one thing stands out — if the goal is to celebrate web originals, then the IAWTV Awards are a step in the right direction. No awards show ever gets it exactly right (especially given how subjective taste can be), but the spread of shows recognized represents a pretty good mix of productions backed by major players and genuinely independent shows.

Looking at the Best Comedy Web Series category, for example, you have the category’s shoe-in nominee, The Guild (Microsoft), as well as Video Game Reunion (Atom/Comedy Central) and Gigi: Almost Pretty (My Damn Channel/BBC Worldwide). But Pretty and The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour are both independently produced and distributed.

And if you look at the Best Drama Web Series category, it’s even better — RCVR is distributed through Machinima, and Pioneer One by Vodo, but both companies are web-native and the other three nominees are completely independent. This means that there are many nominated shows that will genuinely benefit from the greater exposure being offered by being nominated.

The emphasis here is definitely on web series as opposed to the more nebulous and hard-to-define content being produced by YouTube creators (beyond stray nominations for The Phil Defranco Show and the Fine Brothers’ Kids React). And because the eligibility period stretched from January 1, 2010 to October 31, 2011, many of the nominated shows have been dormant for some time — it’s a personal favorite, but it’s been almost a year since the last episode of Fanboy Funhouse was released, and it may not represent the current web video culture as well as another nominee might.

Also, the IAWTV Awards need a better name. Or any name at all, really. The Emmys were named after “the image-orthicon camera tube,” according to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences website — surely there’s an equally obscure web equivalent to that.

Still, as a voting member of the organization, I’m looking forward to making some tough decisions as I fill out my ballot, and watching the live-stream this January. For years, I’ve heard the argument that the web series world may simply be too young for us to start handing out awards, but I’ve decided to be positive about this. After all, as long as the focus stays on the shows and creators, something that inspires people to work harder, make better shows and watch more web content can only be a good thing.

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If your seven-year-old keeps stealing your iPhone to watch YouTube:

It’s kind of inevitable that web series-turned-multiplatform success story The Annoying Orange would branch out into merchandising, and the resulting variety of figurines and plush toys are pretty cute. Toys R Us has a wide selection available for $6.99 to $8.99.

For the friend who’s constantly filming stuff:

For $60.00, you can gift a year’s subscription to Vimeo Plus, which will allow the video nerd in your life unlimited HD video uploading, 5 GB a week of storage space, and full player control. (You’ll be in good company — Vimeo Plus currently has more than 150,000 paying customers.)

For video game fans:

Perhaps a season or two of Red vs. Blue on DVD? One of the first and most popular machinima series ever, nine seasons as well as three volumes of collected shorts have been packaged for DVD, available directly from the Rooster Teeth website. Seasons vary in price from $7.95 (for Season 1) to $19.95 (for Season 2).

For your co-worker who likes to blast music videos on his computer speakers:

Headphones! The gift that keeps on giving. If you want to escape the ubiquitous white Apple earbuds, The Wirecutter recommends the MeElectronics M9 earphones, which you can pick up for $17.99 on Amazon.

For your favorite Guild fan:

The Guild went all out with merchandising this year, but even two years later, this is my personal favorite: Nothing says “Happy Holidays!” like a big poster of Felicia Day and Shirtless Wil Wheaton on the Scottish highlands. ThinkGeek has it for $19.99.

For those with more than 50 YouTube subscriptions:

When I was growing up, Hot Topic was where you bought your goth gear, but in the digital age, the store has branched out to celebrate web culture with a wide variety of T-shirts celebrating everything from Shane Dawson to Nyan Cat. Prices range from $19.50 to $63.50 (for a very fancy Epic Meal Time jacket.)

What other things might an online video fan enjoy getting in their stockings? Tell us in the comments!

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Which is why I spent a day talking with some people who have been involved in the business of online video since its earliest days about whether or not it’s time to retire the phrase and come up with something that better captures the medium. I expected to write an obituary for the “web series.” Instead, I came to the conclusion that it’s here to stay, at least for the time being.

A big reason for that, according to Blip.tv VP of Content Steve Woolf, is that it’s the one term that people recognize. When Blip.tv relaunched the site last May, they settled on the tagline “discover the best in original web series,” but Woolf, who produced the long running series Epic Fu prior to joining Blip, wasn’t for it at first. “I didn’t like term web series — I never have. Coming to it as a producer, it always felt like we were saying this was the minor leagues,” Woolf said in a phone interview.

But when Blip tested a number of terms with focus groups, “nothing resonated with the public like web series did. People didn’t warm to it, but they knew what it was — there was instant recognition. The public needs to have some sort of term to attach to this stuff so they understand what it is.”

That’s not necessarily a good thing, according to producer Wilson Cleveland, who shared this via email:

When the Leap Year trailer was first released on Hulu last summer, I asked my 64 years-young mother to email the link to 10 of her friends of similar age and introduce it simply as “a new series Wilson’s working on.” All 10 watched and responded with various comments. Then I asked her to send the exact same link to 10 other friends of similar age, but to call it a “web series.” This time, four people claimed “the link doesn’t work;” two said the “video won’t play;” one asked “what channel is this on?;” one asked “How do I find this so I know when to watch?” Only two out of the second 10 watched the trailer without any questions or issues. Not exactly a scientific study but it made me wonder if placing the word “web” in front of “series” or “show,” could be hurting the cause at raising the broader awareness we need to grow.

Black Box TV producer Tony Valenzuela doesn’t call his show a web series — instead, he calls it an “online series.” “Online series speaks to me more — ‘web series’ could be anything. Phil DeFranco is a web series to me,” he said via phone.

But Tim Shey, who co-founded Next New Networks and, following its YouTube acquisition, became director of YouTube Next Lab, still actively uses “web series,” because it differentiates web content from television. While all entertainment might be heading towards convergence, that’s still a bit far away, and in the meantime web content is still very different from broadcast.

The differences between web and television are numerous. Just as one small example: Currently, television is still being made with the assumption that it’ll be primarily watched on large screens; producers aren’t necessarily thinking about production on a cross-platform level. Web producers can’t get away with that. One thing Valenzuela pointed out is that he realized that the on-screen text of Black Box TV episodes couldn’t be too small, because people watching on phones wouldn’t be able to read it.

Really, when you think about it, it’s hardly a surprise that so much web original content, even scripted series like The Guild, is based around vlog-style presentation. One thing that resonates across all screen sizes is a close-up on a person’s face, and accordingly the medium has evolved around that.

One of the biggest arguments against the term “web series” is that it doesn’t account for the fact that the web is only one place people are consuming content. But if you’re watching a web series on your smartphone or your television, it’s still something that originated from the web, and carries with it that legacy. “I think the ‘web series’ concept has evolved from being a type of entertainment that was ‘platform specific’ to one that’s ‘platform agnostic,’” Cleveland said. “The evolution of digital technology has been the most significant change agent in the evolution of the ‘web series’ simply because the delivery platforms have changed.” Cleveland’s branded comedy Leap Year, for example, was distributed via Hulu Plus, and was thus watchable across all platforms, including television.

The big differences between web content and television are in the production values, though that gap is closing with each passing year; the subject matter, which leans more toward niche audiences; the emphasis on audience engagement; and the genres that have been successful.

Valenzuela believes that a subtle AMC drama like Mad Men or The Walking Dead just won’t play online, as too much of the action is too subtle to hold fractured attention spans. “Cerebral dramas online have a really hard time getting an audience,” he said. The best dramas are lean-back experiences, and shows that originate on the web will always struggle with that limitation.

Woolf observed that while so much viewing of broadcast content is occurring online, “When you’re going to Netflix to watch a show, you probably intend to go full screen and invest in that show. It’s still a different experience than going to Blip and searching through shows there — you might have chat going, you might have email going. But when distribution to television is easier for web series, scripted dramas will have an easier time.”

In the meantime, as Shey pointed out, “Serialized storytelling is not an underserved audience — there are so many places you can go for that. The web serves audiences that aren’t served by traditional media.”

What’s working against the term “web series,” in the long term, is audience perception, but that’s set to change as the term becomes less about what web content isn’t and more about celebrating what makes it great — the interactivity, the originality.

“It’s really too early a medium and art form to know what we should call it,” Shey said. “‘Web series’ is really just a point of origin. But the answer is not going to come from top down. Ultimately, it’s going to come from the audience.”

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But of the many initiatives that YouTube has implemented to raise the bar for videos on its site, one of the most directly accessible is the YouTube editor, which was launched last year and allows those without access to programs like iMovie or Final Cut Pro the ability to edit videos before posting.

As YouTube has evolved, so has the YouTube editor: Nine weeks ago, the Edit Video feature was launched, allowing users to modify already-posted videos without having to re-upload their videos or change the URL. It’s a game-changer for any frequent YouTube user — and since this feature has been enabled, four million videos have been enhanced by two million unique users, according to YouTube product manager Jason Toff.

The YouTube editor is deliberately designed to make it easy for users lacking editing experience to improve their videos — in fact, features were stripped out during user testing to to keep things from being too confusing, Toff told us. “There are a handful of tools everyone uses — as you add more buttons, people found it to be less easy to use,” Toff said via phone.

Central to the Edit Video feature is the Google-y named “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which when activated identifies and adjusts stabilization, brightness and color correction issues within a video. While it’s possible to make these fixes manually within the Edit Video feature, those changes apply across an entire clip. “I’m Feeling Lucky,” meanwhile, can make dynamic adjustments within the clip, so if a clip starts off too bright and then gets too dark, both issues would be addressed.

Like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google home page, this feature isn’t infallible, especially on footage filmed in dark rooms. But according to Toff, “if it works, it works amazingly well” — and if it doesn’t work, it can be deactivated with one click.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button was not the brainchild of a Google employee, but was instead a project developed by YouTube summer intern Timothy Wong, a computer science student at Stanford University. The challenge he was given, according to Toff, was to “find a way to make videos better just by pressing a button.” Wong completed the challenge in less than two months, with the feature launching just as his internship reached an end.

While YouTube software engineer Rushabh Doshi said that this isn’t the first user-facing feature developed by a Google intern, “the scale of Timmy’s impact is really huge.”

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This week, Bravo.com premiered the first episode of Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen, an online-only series in which two chefs, eliminated from the TV show, compete head-to-head in one final challenge. The winning chef each week goes on to cook against the next eliminated chef; this proceeds until the finale, when the remaining chef will be able to rejoin the competition.

Last Chance Kitchen is fine, on a creative level — it’s a well-paced and professional package that adheres closely to the show’s format (overly dramatic music stings and all). But as a case study in integrating web content into a pre-established series, it’s a potential disaster, largely because of its distribution.

I will not make fun of the fact that the Bravo website, in lieu of embeddable video, is offering a widget to distribute Last Chance Kitchen — because I am kind, and also because the series is thankfully also available on Hulu.

But while super-fans may already be subscribed to Top Chef on Hulu or visiting Bravo.com on a daily basis, for most of the show’s 1.6 million viewers, the only way they’ll remember that Last Chance Kitchen exists is if the show uses precious ad minutes to nag them into going online and watching. As the Los Angeles Times’s John Horn complained, “you have to get up from the TV, start up your laptop and (of all the indignities!) be forced to watch the commercials.”

If Last Chance Kitchen were Hulu Plus and available on phones, tablets or other connected devices, that would be a significant improvement. Unfortunately, it’s not. UPDATE: Last Chance Kitchen can be seen on mobile and tablet platforms via this link or the Bravo now app.

In fact, Hulu’s note about Bravo programming is one of the more peculiarly-worded ones I’ve seen: “Hulu can offer a select number of full-length episodes from Bravo’s lineup each calendar month. The episodes featured and when they are posted are at Bravo’s discretion.” In short: Don’t blame us. It’s Bravo that’s being stingy.

Last Chance Kitchen also proves problematic when you consider how it changes the competition. Let’s say the winner of this first Last Chance Kitchen (no spoilers) goes on to dominate each subsequent episode — competing against chefs who were eliminated later and are thus, by the logic of the show, better chefs. While winning 12 cook-offs against arguably more talented cooks is an impressive feat, it’s an entirely different experience than the challenges the actual cheftestants will be going through — challenges meant in theory to evaluate each chef’s skill in handling a variety of situations. And so when the winner of Last Chance Kitchen re-enters the competition after not having been on television for potentially weeks, he or she will be altering the narrative of the show.

Top Chef has been nominated for Emmys for its efforts to integrate the web and TV in the past — some of the work they’ve done with online polling and Twitter is groundbreaking. In theory, this is what convergence culture creates: the blurring of lines between television and web to tell a story richer than the sum of its parts. But Last Chance Kitchen may well be a major misstep for the show.

That’s because, when creating an experience on multiple platforms, you either have to make sure that each element can be enjoyed separately with no consequences, or make sure that all elements of the experience are easily accessible. For Last Chance Kitchen, neither of these things is true.

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There, for the last six months, Jackson (with presumably some help from the Hobbit production team) has been sporadically posting 10-minute video diaries from the set of the production — essentially, the sort of stuff that you find on the special edition DVDs, except they first started appearing 20 months before the first movie even comes out.

The first diary is relatively unfocused — a hodgepodge of Jackson attending production meetings and taking viewers on a tour of the sets in the lead-up to the first day of production — though it does include off-the-cuff riffing with Sir Ian McKellan, which is never a bad thing.

The three subsequent diaries are somewhat more focused: The second, posted July 8, covers what the crew will be doing during a break in production as well as Jackson and his team doing location scouting, while the third, posted July 20, features Jackson freaking out over shooting at the historic Pinewood Studios and the cast and crew’s favorite moments from the first few months of shooting.

The fourth, which came out just last week, is all about the 3-D camera technology behind the film. If you really like learning about camera rigs and frame rates, you’re in luck! You also learn that Jackson has named the 16 cameras being used to shoot the movie after family members, dogs and Beatles, though, which is quite charming.

As default host of the diaries, Peter Jackson is actually quite adorable. As many others have observed, he’s probably the closest you’ll ever come to seeing a real hobbit in the wild, and his fanboy joy at having the chance to make these films is palpable.

While using Facebook as a distribution platform means that embedding is impossible, multiple reposts of the videos have appeared on YouTube, racking up hundreds of thousands of views thanks to embedding by blogs like Io9.

But the videos are still obviously popular on Facebook; after less than a day online, Video no. 4 had accumulated over 11,000 “likes,” and past videos sport similar numbers. In short, it’s proving to be a brilliant way to keep buzz alive for a film that won’t be in theaters for another 13 months. Not every project would lend itself to this kind of treatment — I doubt anyone would care this much about the production of, say, Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist — but when the making of the film is almost as epic as the film itself, it’s quite deserved.

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And because you can’t have a tech blog these days without some sort of video component, this fall Betabeat has launched its first original web series, The Pitch, which does that show-not-tell thing to illustrate the process of pitching a startup concept to venture capitalists.

Essentially a competitive reality show with a strong documentary influence, The Pitch focuses on eight “Silicon Alley” entrepreneurs, who get the chance to pitch venture capitalists Ben Lerer and Jordan Cooper of Lerer Ventures with their apps or services.

In the current phase of the show, each episode introduces one of the startup ideas in contention, as well as the team behind it, who are then filmed pitching to Lerer and Cooper. Lerer and Cooper give their honest feedback on the idea both directly to the startups in an interview segment. Later, three finalists will be selected not only for potential investment, but a cash prize — the value of which has yet to be determined, though Betabeat editor Ben Popper, in a phone interview, says it’ll be “substantial.”

So far, the profiles, while maybe a bit too slow-paced, are a nice mix of technology proposal and personal details — the guys behind Olapic don’t want to say much about the Vegas trip that inspired their photo-sharing application, while the duo behind a gamification concept tell the story of they met via their respective blogs. And the VCs themselves seem very comfortable doing what they do for a living on camera.

Because, in a sense, they are doing what they do for a living — listening to and judging startup pitches they might potentially invest in; Lerer and Cooper are even continuing to follow up on some of the pitches they’ve heard. The only artificial element of The Pitch, according to Popper, is the selection of the contestants, which he and director Brian Spinks picked; otherwise, the show is just there to observe what happens.

While The Real World seeks out drunken crazies to create conflict, Popper’s focus in casting the show was to find early stage companies that seemed innovative, and also reflected the geographic diversity of founders now living in New York. Of course, when you consider how many startup founders are gambling everything on this one idea, there’s really no need to add additional drama.

Popper said that narrowing the field from over a hundred submissions to the featured eight meant he “got to practice being a VC.” Which brings up an issue that’s been debated recently in the tech blog world — specifically, the overlap between journalist and venture capitalist, highlighted by Michael Arrington’s dramatic departure from Techcrunch to found CrunchFund, and Techcrunch writer MG Siegler joining Crunchfund as a VC shortly after.

The Pitch, of course, is merely documenting venture capitalists at work, but from his point of view, there’s still an overlap. “Being a journalist and a VC aren’t so different,” he said. “We both want to know about new companies first.”

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Aim High, created by Heath Corson and Richie Keen and produced by McG for Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, is the first pairing of Facebook and a Hollywood studio for a web original. Like other WB digital properties, it will also likely be packaged for other formats, such as VOD and DVD distribution.

The story of a teenager torn between his work as a highly trained government operative and his life as a struggling high school junior, Aim High‘s pedigree is reflected in the quality of production: Star Jackson Rathbone (Twilight) proves more than capable of carrying the show, and it’s a fun, fast-paced series.

“The pace was tailored for a savvy web audience. Meaning, the show jumps from, like, five different timelines. Sometimes in the same episode. We felt like this audience would be able to follow that without us having to spoon-feed them. And the great thing with digital is, if they don’t, they can always scrub back and watch something again,” Corson and Keen said via email.

Of course, in order to discover that, you have to be in the U.S. and logged into Facebook. (Update: You do not have to be logged into Facebook if you watch Aim High on Cambio.com.) However, logging in allows viewers to opt into the “Personalized” version of the series, which pulls information from the viewer’s profile and embeds it into the show at various points. The integration is relatively minor, and only occasionally a bit distracting, as seen below:

Whoa, "Aim High." Don't hate.

While it doesn’t necessarily add much to the narrative, it is an intriguing use of the technology — between the personalization and Rathbone’s Twilight fanbase, the show has accrued nearly 19,000 Likes five days after its launch, with more than 5,400 people “talking about this.”

The sci-fi indie series Continuum, meanwhile, doesn’t require any sort of log-in from its viewers: Instead, the first episode of three to be previewed on Facebook is openly available on its Facebook page. The 2001-esque tale of an amnesiac trapped on a lost spaceship by Pink creator Blake Calhoun has been highly anticipated since 2010, when production first began. According to Calhoun, the Facebook release is a “soft launch” to inspire interest in the full series, which will premiere in early 2012.

“With Pink I found it can take some time to build and find an audience — discoverability still being one of online show’s biggest obstacles, of course — so what I’m really hoping is this helps build awareness and ultimately an audience for the series,” he said via email.

Thus, Calhoun is focusing on metrics that measure the buzz being generated: Currently, the Continuum Facebook page has almost 700 likes, a number that Calhoun says has grown by almost 15 percent since the show’s premiere.

What’s intriguing about Facebook distribution is that it’s not really a platform tailor-made for watching video; there’s no embedding and the sharing interface is clunky. Plus, in the case of Aim High, requiring the audience to be logged-in Facebook users is an issue — while Facebook does claim to have more than 800 million active users, limiting access to viewers with Facebook accounts does mean losing a few viewers. The conventional wisdom of web content these days, after all, is that the easier it is for someone to find and watch your show, the more likely it will happen.

However, keeping your show exclusive to one site does make it easier to push out and measure metrics, including demographics. In addition, what Facebook-exclusive distribution seem to do is immediately create a community around a show, if only because you can see which of your friends are watching, as well as their comments. And in the case of Aim High, the personalization feature does reward those who choose to sign in; it’s not an arbitrary demand.

There are potential benefits and drawbacks — gentle readers, what do you think? Please feel free to share in the comments.

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Connected, which is currently in limited theatrical release and will be available on DVD and digital formats in 2012, is about the evolution of human communication and how it has changed our lives, for better and for worse. It is ALSO about Shlain simultaneously coping with her scholar father’s brain cancer and pregnancy with a second child.

It is about a lot of things, which is communicated by the film’s subtitle: “An Autoblogography.” “I wanted [Autoblogography] to convey a bunch of things — that the film is autobiographical, with blogography a nod to all the technology in the film — also, the word is just so ridiculous, and shows how I want one thing to do a whole bunch of things for me. It makes me laugh,” Shlain said in a phone interview.

The decision to make the film more bloggy, Shlain said, came about after she’d been working on it for some time, but was struggling to get inspired. “I was working on a film about connectedness and wasn’t feeling connected to it,” she said. Giving the film a personal component, she felt, was the best solution.

Like many personal narratives, people react by wanting to tell their own stories, an impulse that Shlain and the Connected team have been channeling by encouraging people to visit their (extremely active) Facebook page, which has been liked by over eight thousand people so far. “People post about how it’s changing their lives, how wired we are. Everyone is hungry to talk about this subject.”

In the film, Shlain refers casually to how she and her family have instituted a weekly period of unplugging, a sort of digital shabbas that begins on Friday night — which has become, for her, how she finds balance. When we spoke, she hadn’t been able to do her weekly unplugging for three weeks due to her touring schedule with the film, and said that she felt “off-kilter” as a result.

The idea of unplugging is one communicated by a short film which played at the Guggenheim as part of the YouTube Play exhibit last year; Yelp, a digital age riff on Allen Ginsberg’s classic poem Howl, was made at the same time as Connected. In fact, the two films share animation, footage and a narrator. (E.T. star Peter Coyote — “he has the perfect rich voice of God,” Shlain said.)

There are huge ideas in Connected, and small personal touches; it simultaneously makes the case that our over-connected society can be damaging on both a personal and global level — but also looks to those same connection tools as our salvation, because acknowledging our “interdependence” creates conversations that can lead to change.

It’s a concept that can be seen in action right now with the Occupy Wall Street movement — literally, you can see it for yourself, thanks to this age of wonders we live in. You can see right now, how, in Shlain’s words, “We can all be empowered to make change in this world.”

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Doing the “Sell Out” shorts put a comical spin on the concept of merchandising the show — but two years later, it’s become a reality, kind of. Beyond t-shirts manufactured by Jinx and a series of comics published by Dark Horse the following officially licensed Guild-related products are now or will soon be available:

• A limited-edition necklace version of the staff carried by Day’s avatar Codex, by independent jewelry designers Jenny and Jimbob.
• A Codex Halloween costume for adult ladies, by HalloweenCostumes.com.
• Two posters, available for sale on ThinkGeek.
• A line of “animated maquettes” (think small hand-painted statues) of Guild characters, by Quantum Mechanix.
• A set of collectable trading cards, created by Cryptozoic.
• A limited-edition six-pack of soda by Jones Soda.
• A booster pack for the classic card game Munchkin, created by Steve Jackson Games.

What do many of these things have in common? They’re all the kind of merchandise you might run across while attending a gaming convention. And that’s not a coincidence.

When preparing to launch the fifth season of The Guild (which will premiere its season finale this week), both Evey and Day said that they were looking at a much more ambitious concept — instead of shooting largely in apartments, the season would take place largely at a geek conference. “We were on location 90 percent of the time, there were tons of extras — it was more of a movie shoot than any other season,” Day said via phone.

But because, according to Day, the budget for Season 5 was relatively equivalent to Season 4, they needed to look to other means to supplement the production — thankfully, though, the conference setting offered a natural opportunity to integrate product placement. “The question was ‘Can this add to our universe?’ instead of it just being ‘Please give us some money,’” Day said.

This product placement took multiple forms. For example, according to Evey via email, HalloweenCostumes.com PR representative Stephanie Beadell approached The Guild the day after they’d realized they needed multiple conference-appropriate costumes for Tink (Amy Okuda), as well as enough costumes for an auditorium’s worth of background extras.

“HalloweenCostumes.com provided costumes in exchange for advertising and promotion of their company. And because almost all of Tink’s cosplay outfits use their costumes as a base, it’s nice for the fans to know where to go if they want to make one of those outfits to wear to a Con,” she said.

As the show is already sponsored by Microsoft and Sprint, Day and Evey were careful to run all additional product placement deals by those companies, and were careful to seek out things that would “in no way trample over their brands,” as Day put it.

And from those product placement deals, many of the merchandising opportunities later emerged. For example, the Steve Jackson Games deal followed the prominent placement of Munchkin in the Season 5 premiere, and HalloweenCostumes.com pitched the idea of a well-made officially licensed Codex costume after supplying the production with other costumes. “The things we’ve done have been very carefully picked for the cool value — they added value to how people enjoy the show,” Day said.

The Cryptozoic trading cards are another example of a property approaching The Guild for a potential merchandising opportunity, in this case through Felicia Day’s agent at ICM, George Ruiz. “We’ve all been huge fans of the show since the beginning and thought Guild trading cards would be really cool,” a Cryptozoic press representative said via email. It’s the first deal they’ve made with a web original property, but “I don’t think it will be the last. Web broadcast is really no less impactful than traditional networks. For us and our customers it’s already a well accepted form of content distribution.”

Cryptozoic's "Guild" trading cards will be available for purchase

On the surface, a merchandising blitz like this could be seen as “selling out” — except that everything that’s being manufactured has real appeal for the show’s established audience, the core demographic of which is not just passionate about the show, but gaming culture in general.

“I think the origins of the term ["selling out"] probably come from someone not preserving the heart of why people like something in order to make a profit,” Day said. “I’m confident that we’ve taken every consideration to make all our partnerships fit with our show philosophy and our fans and we’ve heard very little feedback to the contrary.”

“Being able to partner with brands with independent cred was very important to to me, because that’s the spirit of the show,” Day added. “We didn’t want to partner with anyone that people wouldn’t think was cool.” According to Day, fans were as excited about the specialty Jones Sodas as they were about actual episodes.

When asked what her favorite piece of merchandise might be, Day’s first response was the Codex Halloween costume, which enables folks of all shapes and sizes to dress up just like her. “I never thought that would happen,” she said.

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The announcement caps off an epic seven-year-long run, one that proved there was an audience for longer-form content online and also helped build Revision3 into a full-fledged web content network. Expect beer company stock to drop dramatically when the market opens tomorrow.

While the show’s not over quite yet, in memoriam, we reached out to the team at Diggnation to find out what some of their favorite moments were over the course of the show’s run.

Co-host Alex Albrecht said via email that one of his favorite moments was “The first appearance of Jimmy Fallon. Kevin and Jimmy high fiving in front of my face. :(“

Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback’s favorite moment, he said via email, also involved Jimmy Fallon. “When we did an episode at MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, she made cocktails for all of us. She makes a mean drink – and Jimmy Fallon stopped by to say hi too!” (Coincidentally, this is also my favorite moment, because those cocktails sound amazing.)

Via email, the show’s often-abused David Prager (who is a co-founder of Revision3 and Diggnation producer) called out one of his favorite Diggnation moments to date:

When the show was performed at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles in early January 2009. A thick line of fans waiting to get into the show spanned down Hollywood Boulevard infamous walk of fame and around the corner and kept on going. Tourists walking by excitedly asked what movie was premiering or what headline Hollywood event was taking place and I remember saying to one of ‘em, “Don’t worry about it, it’s just a podcast.”

And for old time’s sake, here’s the very first episode of Diggnation, posted July 1, 2005.

Oh, how they’ve grown.

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