Look up the term “smart money” in the dictionary and it’s likely that you’ll find an entry for Union Square Ventures (USV), one of the most notable and successful early stage Internet focused venture capital firms in the marketplace. The firm famous for its prescient investments in Web upstarts such as Twitter, Boxee, Zynga, Etsy and Foursquare has been raising the bar for VCs everywhere over the past few years and shows no sign of slowing.

So what exactly is USV’s “secret sauce” and how does it determine what the next big thing on the Internet worth investing in will be? That’s exactly what our very own Simon Bond asked Union Square Managing Partner Albert Wenger during his recent visit to the Digital Lab.

In addition to sharing a little bit on USV’s investing philosophy, Albert also discussed the transformative aspects of the Web on brands in all industries as well as the implications of native web business models into the future.

It goes without saying that Albert (along with his USV partners Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham) have this Web thing down to a science. We’re just thankful he was willing to share a little bit of his wealth (of knowledge) with us on Digital Lab TV. Have a look.

A dollar for a pixelated tractor to plow your trade on Farmville here and another one for a digital representation of a birthday cake there really does add up. Those in the know understand that these examples are references to the bourgeoning world of virtual goods; a largely micropayment-driven marketplace for non-physical objects that are purchased with real money for use in online communities, virtual worlds or games (usually to fulfill a functional or decorative goal). This nascent market is estimated to currently be worth over $3 billion (according to Piper Jaffray) and is poised for explosive growth over the next few years.

So how can brands start to play in this compelling high growth sector where digital creativity meets consumer demand? And what does the future really hold for the entire category? Those were just some of the questions that Dan Jansen, founder and CEO of leading virtual goods platform Virtual Greats, attempted to answer during his recent visit to the Digital Lab. You can check out Dan’s take on where this compelling space is headed right here on Digital Lab TV.

This week marks another edition of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, the video game industry’s pre-eminent trade conference and showcase. One of this year’s most anticipated new product introductions that generated huge buzz at the show was Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller technology (formerly Project Natal) that allows console gamers to control the on-screen action with pure physical body movements without the need for any physical handheld controller. This innovation and several more unveiled at the show this week are all contributing to interactive gaming being larger and more mainstream than it’s ever been. With the large captive audience that gaming attracts comes compelling advertising and brand engagement opportunities; opportunities that Microsoft’s in-game advertising division Massive tries to maximize on an ongoing basis. Earlier this year, the Lab was lucky enough to have Brian Elieson, Director of Products and Partners at Massive / Microsoft stop by to share some eye-opening insights on the ever-growing world of in-game advertising. He sat down with Digital Lab TV as well for a chat; check out the highlights.

While New York-based Foursquare steals much of the headlines nowadays when it comes to the topic of location-based mobile platforms due to its remarkable growth (over 1 million members in a little over a year) and potential for real-world location-based marketing, there is an increasingly visible West Coast based startup that is quietly taking the mobile world by storm with a growth curve that actually leaves Foursquare in the dust. The company’s name is Booyah and its lead-off mobile game MyTown, a digitized twist on the game of Monopoly that lets is users “buy” real estate by checking into real-life locations, is making the world take notice. The game recently hit the staggering 2 million user mark (Foursquare has approximately 1.2 million users) and is on track to gain about 500,000 users a month!  This supersonic growth rate likely played no small part in convincing Accel Partners to recently inject $20 million into the company. So what is it that’s driving this rocket-fueled rate of growth? Earlier in the year at SXSWi we asked David Wang and Lexy Franklin that very question. Here’s what they said.

Everyone’s favorite online personalized radio service, Pandora, has been on a tear recently. First, it was announced that the company that narrowly escaped death a number of times since its founding in 2000 is estimated to earn $100 million in revenue this year, then Ford announces that it is planning to be the first auto manufacturer to integrate the service into its cars and, most recently, it was made known that Pandora is partnering with Facebook for social music. We at Digital Lab TV caught up with Pandora Chief Technology Officer Tom Conrad earlier this year at SXSWi to see what we could learn from this incredible music startup that could.

What exactly is AOL Seed? A recently revealed skunkworks project developed by AOL for its next phase of evolution as an independent company? A new model of distributed online content sourcing and development optimized for the digital age? A way for the unknown amateur journalist and photographer in many of us to get published and paid? Apparently it’s all three according to Seed.com Programming Director Saul Hansell, who was kind enough to give Digital Lab TV an overview of the initiative last month outside of the Seed booth at SXSW. Let’s take a look.

So what do you do after serving as CIO to arguably the world’s most important tech company? Write a book and start a brand new company of course. That’s essentially the storyline behind our next SXSW interview; we had the pleasure of cornering Dr. Douglas Merrill, former CIO of Google, at SXSW last month and spoke to him about the panel discussion he was highlighted on as well as his future plans to take over the world. It’s not easy being brilliant.

Wouldn’t it be great to make instant music-driven videos out of any old digital photos you have stored in your hard drive? Wait a minute – you CAN make instant music-driven videos out of any digital photos lying around on your hard drive, with a web service that makes the seemingly impossible easy: Animoto. Digital Lab TV met up with Animoto’s co-founder and president Jason Hsiao last month at SXSWi and asked him to share the magic behind his increasingly popular media service.

Although South By Southwest Interactive has been wrapped up for a few weeks now, we at Digital Lab still reminisce over the dynamism of one of the only events that can bring together the best and brightest minds in web entrepreneurialism, big tech and media all in one place. Well, to capture the moment as best we could, we at Digital Lab TV caught up with a few of the trailblazer attendees at SXSWi shaping the new digital marketplace and probed them on their latest thoughts, projects and groundbreaking innovations. We’ll be sharing our Johnny-on-the-spot interviews with them over the next few posts of Digital Lab TV so that warm and fuzzy SXSW feeling doesn’t have to end just yet.

First off, we caught up with Liz Gannes of tech uber blog and research outfit GigaOM to find out what her thoughts were on SXSW and what themes stood out for her.

Let’s face it. Foursquare is hotter than freshly laid asphalt in the summertime. The location-based social network is leveraging the best in geo-location technology, social connectivity and game mechanics to stay ahead of the pack in the increasingly competitive race among a growing crop of mobile social networks to be “check-in” king. Plus, they have the stats to prove it. Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of Foursquare checked in at the Digital Lab recently to share the secrets behind Foursquare’s success and discuss what lies ahead for the mobile space, especially as it relates to location-enabled marketing. Our very own EVP of Digital Strategy at BBDO, Chad Stoller then sat down with his long-time buddy Naveen to talk shop in the latest edition of Digital Lab TV. Check it out.