Here’s the thing though: Advertisers aren’t dummies. The $3 million they shell out for Super Bowl ads often pays off. Just think of all the stories that ran before the game in your local newspaper or on your local TV newscast (or here at Reuters.com). Or consider the party you attended yesterday — most people probably stayed in front of the TV set during timeouts. Hear much talk about Super Bowl ads today around the water cooler? Thought so.

A ton of polls are out today rating the best and worst Super Bowl commercials. Snickers and Doritos seem to be faring well.  Focus on the Family? Ahhh, that ad didn’t seem to knock anybody’s socks off. Then again, it didn’t have to. Do a Google News search and look at how much was written about the group’s advertisement long before it aired. That’s good marketing.

Like anything creative, advertising is a highly subjective. We had people over to watch the game — and the spots that our group liked can’t be found near the top of most polls (for the record, Cars.com, Monster.com and Dove Men + Care were popular in our living room). Beyond our little group, I had one advertising expert tell me it was the best group of advertisements he’d seen in years; another was highly unimpressed by the lot of them.

As for polls, they may not be scientific, and they may not reflect your reaction to the commercials, but they do matter. If nothing else, they create even more buzz, gets the spots watched for the second, third, or fourth time, and, presumably, drive traffic to the advertisers’ web site.

Below is the spot from Snickers, which seems to be the most often atop today’s polls:

This story by Thomas Mucha originally appeared in GlobalPost.

As Toyota careened from one recall crisis to the next, the contrast was almost funny.

In one corner, we had pure Kabuki theater — a highly-stylized corporate drama playing out on the world stage.

At a hastily-called news conference in Nagoya on Feb. 5, Akio Toyoda — Toyota president and grandson of the company’s legendary founder Kiichiro Toyoda — bowed deeply in remorse before a gaggle of Japanese photographers. He then, dutifully, uttered phrases like “personal responsibility,” “deeply regretted,” and “very sorry.”

Finally, Toyoda announced a new “taskforce” under his control to look into quality problems, and skedaddled.

It was everything you’d expect from a Japanese mea culpa (minus the ritual suicide) — stoic, very public and, of course, entirely predictable.

But then something interesting happened.

I received (along with thousands of other people) an email, with an invitation to visit this page on the popular social media website Digg:

Toyota wants to hear from you — submit and vote up questions below!

With the recent controversy surrounding the Toyota vehicle recall, Jim Lentz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Motor Sales, USA, will answer the Digg community’s top questions for a very timely and topical live Digg Dialogg. He will be sitting down with Digg to provide perspective on what happened, what they’re doing about it and what consumers need to know about the recall. Submit and Digg questions from now until Monday, February 8th at 8 a.m. PT to decide which will be asked in this exclusive interview.

Of course, “exclusive” is pushing things a bit. Lentz has been on an old media blitz all week, yapping to everyone from the Today Show, to ABC News, to NPR about how it’s safe to drive a Toyota.

But the Digg Dialogue is different. In essence, Toyota’s U.S. boss is laying himself out before the site’s 40 million rowdy users, any of whom have a chance to ask him — in no uncertain terms and in a most public forum — WTF?

As of this writing, Digg’s minions have submitted 1,076 questions. They are, naturally, diverse in tone and subject. But they seem to be falling into several important categories.

Some ask about the recall and the company’s response:

* Omahahaha: My question is WHY? Why did it take Toyota so long, to even acknowledge that there were issues with their vehicles? Why did Toyota wait until they were under world-scrutiny, to even come forward and admit that there might be safety concerns, and other issues involved? How many more injuries and deaths would it take?
* symmetrical: How are you dismissing your earlier assertion that floor mats were to blame? Your attorneys will of course recommend you not answer this question.
* ttwiv: Apple co-founder Steve Wasniak says he has identified a software problem in his Prius that results in unwanted acceleration. Given his credibility in the software industry, have you considered contacting him to follow-up on his findings?

Others delve into more political aspects of the crisis:

* minnesotayoyo: The U.S. government is now a major stakeholder in both G.M. and Chrysler. In light of the recent Toyota recalls, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has made official statements regarding the reliability and safety of Toyota vehicles. Do you think LaHood and the DOT are unfairly biased against automakers that the government does not have vested interest in?
* deafalla: Do you feel that GM’s partnership with the US Government is the reason this issue was so publicized? And does this bother you that a problem this big went on for so long? Does QA know of any other issues that may be outstanding that we should know of?
* akarsvp222: Do you think Toyota is being unfairly targeted by the NHTSA?

Another group is concerned with technical aspects of automotive manufacturing:

* coredump0×01: Why is Toyota and other automakers using an electronics-based “drive-by-wire” system for acceleration control instead of the more traditional cable and pulley system?
* jamak: Why is Toyota not re-examining its drive-by-wire systems in its models which have accelerating problem ? It seems obvious that it was not a floor mat problem and it will not be due to pedal problems. It seems to be due to faulty drive-by-wire system or a bug in the software inside this system. No point in blaming harmless things in the car while ignoring the hidden problem.

A bunch feel like Toyota marketing department plants:

* coldzero1120: “What is your leadership philosophy? How do you apply it to your leader position? How do you balance between finance and other values (eg. your people, family or your own values)? What is your most honored achievement in life?”
* gen8x: “I think Toyota clients are quite tolerant and sympathized to the situation. Do you intend to organize a public event name e.g. “Toyota Commitment Day” to say thanks for the clients’ patience?”
* raf4far: Is going on Digg Dialogg part of your campaign to try to get people trust Toyota again, and would you have ever been on Digg Dialogg if it wasn’t for this?

And, since this is the internet, the best subset is just plain funny:

* Dinsdale77: Dude why doesn’t Toyota make coffee? And, on a related note, is there anything about coffee that could make it work too fast, like a car?
* HeavySausage: Do you own a samurai sword?
* pstroll: how do i get corporate hair like you?
* ajv205: When will Toyota start making cars that can fly? That would be great.

Will this new strategy work? Of course, it’s too soon to know and much will depend upon Lentz’s performance when the interview takes place next week.

Moreover, the 14 previous Digg Dialogues have starred less controversial subjects like NFL running back Adrian Peterson, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, and Matt Damon. So featuring a harried suit in crisis is a departure for Digg, let alone for a traditionally conservative corporate giant like Toyota.

But in the grand scheme of crisis management — to say nothing of the vagaries of a fragmenting media industry and the idiosyncrasies of a worldwide consumer market — this feels like the right move for our times.

First, it allows a global audience to ask a global company about a global problem. Toyota is putting the world in the world wide web, as a way to respond directly to its cascading quality and image woes.

But best of all, the Digg strategy sidesteps well-coifed talking heads like the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer and ABC’s Brian Ross. That’s a big depature from traditional ways to get a corporate message out.

Instead, it puts the power — or at least the power to question — where it belongs: in the hands of people who actually might want to buy Toyotas again.

This recall crisis will only end with real people making real decisions about what they really want to buy. For Toyota, a more transparent and democratic approach now playing out on Digg could make all the difference.

More stories from GlobalPost:

Fordzilla vs. Japan

The magic of a name

Japanese consumers tighten spending

“Tokyo Vice”: Underground with the Yakuza

So the reports on Friday that Facebook was developing its own Web-based email, supposedly referred to internally as a “Gmail killer” raised a lot of eyebrows – not the least because Paul Buchheit, the former Google engineer who created Gmail, now works at Facebook (Facebook acquired Bucheit’s social networking startup FriendFeed last year).

But if there’s a Facebook email product in the works, Buchheit isn’t working on it.

In a post on to his FriendFeed account on Friday, Buchheit said, “No, I am not working on anything related to email,” adding that he did not plan to either.

News of Facebook’s web based email product was reported on the TechCrunch blog on Friday. According to TechCrunch, who cited a source with knowledge of the product, the effort is codenamed Project Titan but is unofficially called the Gmail killer among some employees.

(Additional reporting by Ian Sherr)

EA ran a simulation of the Super Bowl XLIV matchup through its popular “Madden NFL 10” game on the Xbox 360, and the Saints edged the Indianapolis Colts 35-31.

A little taste of play-by-play from the world of make-believe sports:

“With the game hanging in the balance, Drew Brees hits David Thomas for an 11-yard touchdown and the game winning score. Drew Brees takes home MVP honors as the Saints earn their first Super Bowl Championship title in the franchise’s 46 year history.”

EA’s prediction is nothing to be scoffed at. Last year, the game publisher predicted Pittsburgh would top Arizona 28-24 – eerily close to the game’s actual results, which the Steelers won 27-23.

EA used “Madden” to predict the results for both the AFC and NFC championship games within a margin of three points. And the company said it has correctly predicted the Super Bowl winner in five of the last six years, since it began running the simulation in 2004.

Bing might even make some money eventually, he suggested in an interview today, once advertisers start to see it as a creditable alternative to Google.

But how long does it have to achieve those goals? Microsoft has lost more than $5 billion in its online business in the last four years. The company keeps saying it is a long-term project, but surely it has to see results soon.

Mehdi’s answer to that question in the clip below, and his thoughts on the delayed relaunch of the MSN portal,  from an interview at Bing’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington today.

Here’s a quick list:

1976
High school buddies, and dropouts, Steven Wozniak and Steven Jobs found Apple Computer. Their first product, Apple I, built in circuit board form, debuts at “the Homebrew Computer Club” in Palo Alto, California, to little fanfare.

1977
The company unveils the Apple II, perhaps the first personal computer in a plastic case with color graphics. It is a big hit.

1983
Apple starts selling the “Lisa,” a desktop computer for businesses with a graphical user interface, the computer system most users are familiar with today. A year earlier, Jobs was booted from the Lisa project — so he started working on the Macintosh.

1984 – Apple debuts the Macintosh personal computer. It is hyped with a dark, stylized commercial in which a lone “heroine” takes on “Big Brother” characters that are reminiscent of those in George Orwell’s novel “1984″ — a metaphor for IBM. Directed by “Alien” and “Blade Runner” filmmaker Ridley Scott, the ad airs just once nationally, during the Super Bowl.

1991
Apple introduces the Powerbook 100, its first hit portable computer.

1993
The Newton Message Pad, Apple’s first handheld device, debuts. The touchscreen device features many tools found in today’s smartphones, such as an address book, a calendar and an e-mail function. It flops.

September 1997
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who left in 1985 after a power struggle, is named interim CEO of the struggling company, which had racked up losses of more than $1.8 billion in the previous two fiscal years.

November 1997
Jobs introduces a new line of Macintosh computers, called G3. He also demonstrates a new Web site that will let people order machines directly from Apple.

1998
Apple unveils the iMac desktop computer, boasting its simple setup and built for an Internet age.

2001
Apple introduces the iPod, a palm-sized, hard-drive-based digital music player

2003
The iTunes Store opens. The software-based application allows users to shop for music, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows for download over the Internet.

2005
The iPod adds video, and Apple fills out its portable media line with the low-end iPod shuffle, and sleek iPod nano. (Through 2009, it sold more than 220 million iPods.)

January 2007
Apple announces the iPhone. The device features one button on its smooth face and has a “virtual” keyboard. It also introduces Apple TV, considered one of Apple’s lowlights.

September 2007
Apple unveils the iPod Touch — essentially an iPhone without the phone — which has wireless capabilities and can perform much like a portable computer.

2008
Apple opens the doors to the App Store as an update to iTunes. The store features small applications — from games to social and business tools — that add functions to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple also releases the Macbook Air, a slim portable computer.

2009
Apple releases the iPhone 3GS.

2010
After months of speculation, Apple introduced the iPad, a sleek, full-color, half-inch thin touchscreen gadget designed for a variety of media, from videos to games to electronic books, movies and newspapers. Apple is hoping the device will be a new growth engine, particularly as iPod sales wane.

Credits:

Photos in descending order:
* Steve Jobs stands beneath a photograph of him and Apple-co founder Steve Wozniak during the launch of Apple’s new “iPad” — Reuters, Kinberly White
* Ad for Apple’s “Lisa”, Computer History Museum
* “1984″; Youtube
* Newton, Reuters file
* Steve Jobs with iPod, Reuters file
* Apple iPhone, Reuters file
* Apple iPad, Reuters file

Still, I'm sure there'll be plenty of people happy to give it a try on Sunday when the Premier League goes all Avatar on us.

Pubs in nine British cities, kitted out with expensive new TVs and all manner of electronic jiggery-pokery, will be screening the Arsenal v Manchester United game in 3D. So before the ink is even dry on that HD contract you signed over Christmas, there's a chance for a peak at what broadcasters must be praying will be The Next Big Thing.

How do you like the idea?

I guess that might depend on how appealing you find the prospect of vein-popping, mud-splattered, spittle-flecked young athletes leaping out of a 50-inch screen and coming straight at you.

Me? I'm holding out for football in 4D, where you can take time back and make sure your goalkeeper was in the right place to save that winning penalty. Now that'd be a must-have service.

PHOTO: France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon wear a pair of special 3D glasses for use in a virtual environment during a presentation at Dassault Systemes in Velizy near Paris January 18, 2010. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

But the company also has a rep for maintaining an iron grip on its image and its message. Wednesday’s launch of the iPad, a product whose details have been closely guarded by Apple for months ahead of the launch, showed Apple’s operation at its best.

To the surprise of many, Apple CEO Steve Jobs turned up at the demo room after the main event and appeared to be casually hobnobbing with Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg.

But the scene was hardly the impromptu, open conversation it appeared.

Most of the people gathered around Jobs and Mossberg were not fellow reporters hunting for a quote, but a squad of no-nonsense, plain-clothed Apple staffers who had formed a human cordon around their leader. The only other person allowed within the safe zone was Mossberg, and any reporters who attempted to get near were physically blocked and pushed back.

Conversations with Apple staff about the iPad itself proved equally trying, with the mere act of getting a company spokesperson to confirm or clarify a fact feeling like an exercise in the theatre of the absurd.

“How do I spell your name?” this reporter asked an Apple staffer following a short conversation to confirm certain basic features of the iPad.

“That’s not available for you,” the staffer replied, in an eerily robotic tone.

A second Apple staffer chimed in that the company was not doing interviews.

So who should the information be attributed to?

“To be honest all these guys are here to help inform. And we’re able to provide that service to you so you have the right information, but we can’t have you quoting Apple employees or spokespeople because we really aren’t providing any today,” the second Apple employee said.

OK, that clears it up. Thanks.

• The iPad is an impressive device to handle. It’s light and fast, with a bright screen and easy functionality. Movies appeared without a stutter and the gaming experience was an obvious asset.  The iBook e-reader application had a nice look, but it doesn’t mimic old-fashioned print in the same way that Amazon’s Kindle does.
• Steve Jobs pointed out that since the iPad runs on a version of the same software that powers the iPhone and iPod touch, many people will be quite comfortable using the new tablet: “Because we shipped over 75 million iPhones and iPod touches, there’s over 75 million people that already know how to use the iPad.”
• Jobs also noted that between the iTunes Store and the App Store — and the forthcoming iBook store — “we have over 125 million accounts with credit cards all enabled for one-click shopping on all these stores.”

• No details on what books will cost on the iBook store. Also nothing on a potential TV subscription service, as had been rumored.
• The iPad has no camera, as many had speculated it might, and doesn’t support Flash.
• Not exactly news, but Jobs is still no fan of netbooks:  ”The problem is netbooks aren’t better at anything. They’re slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software. So they’re not better than a laptop at anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops.”
• As many had predicted, the iPad features Apple’s own silicon, the A4 chip. Apple acquired a semiconductor company, PA Semi, in 2008.
• Apple just sold its 250 millionth iPod. Safe to say it would be thrilled to see that performance from the iPad.

“Apple is a mobile devices company. That’s what we do.”

“When you feel all this power, and this much fun, and the internet in your hands, you’ll never want to go back.”

Reuters

“When we set out to develop the iPad, we not only had very ambitious technical goals, and user interface goals, but we had a very aggressive price goal. Because we want to put this in the hands of lots of people.”

“At $499, a lot of people can afford an iPad.”

“Another thing we’re so excited about is that because we shipped over 75 million iPhones and iPod Touches, there’s over 75 million people that already know how to use iPad. We can’t wait for them to get their hands on it.”

On creating an entirely new class of computing product:

“If there’s going to be a third category of device., it’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise it has no reason for being.

“Now some people have thought that’s a netbook. The problem is netbooks aren’t better at anything. They’re slow, they have low quality displays and they run clunky old PC software.

“So they’re not better than a laptop at anything. They’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops.

“We think we got the goods.”

On the iPad’s hardware:

“We have a chip called A4 which is the most advanced chip we’ve ever run that powers the iPad. It’s got processor, graphics, I/O, memory controller, everything in this one chip, and it screams.”

On getting into the e-book market:

“Now, Amazon’s done a great job of pioneering this functionality with their Kindle.

“And we’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further.”

On Apple’s trio of online stores, iTunes, App store and new ibookstore:

“Between these stores, we have over 125 million accounts with credit cards all enabled for one-click shopping on all these stores.

“We are at scale and we are ready for the iPad.”

On that special Apple  je-ne-sais-quoi:

“The reason Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts; to be able to get the best of both.

“To make extremely advanced products from the technology point of view, that also happen to be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users. The users don’t have to come to them. They come to the user.”