Man, I love me a good behind-the-scenes reel. I don’t care whether it’s about browsers (happy b-day, Rube) or what I can only assume is psychotropic cat food — if it’s done well, a video about creatives making awesome stuff helps sell me on the product as well as the shops peddling it.

Take Touching Stories, for example. The free iPad app came out on 6/25 — eons ago in internet years. While it looked impressive, it didn’t blow me away until I stumbled across the making-of a few days later. Kudos to Domani and Tool of North America on a job well done.

Posted via email from hawkt.com | Comment »

Too bad NeighborGoods isn’t backward-compatible with your life….

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

A behind-the-scenes player with tons of industry cred, Cliqset is the Cam’ron of lifestreaming platforms. But the launch of Cliqset 2.0 yesterday may help the social aggregator step into the mainstream.

Like Killa Cam, Cliqset is all about flow. The service plugs your favorite social networks into a single stream, and recent enhancements up the ante by allowing users to feed, follow, filter and even export more types of content than ever via an ultra-simple UI.

In short, there’s a lot for hardcore social media heads to love about Cliqset. But as we all know, industry respect alone doesn’t pay the bills.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

Andrew Ternovskiy’s head must be spinning. Until recently, everyone was betting the house on Chatroulette. We all went all in — even Jon Stewart, for the love of Peter.

Then the bell tolled a resounding “donnnnnnggg” and the world nexted Mr. Ternovskiy. Yesterday Salon went so far as to pronounce Chatroulette dead, declaring that “you can’t build an empire on d*cks.”

While I can think of a few people and at least one industry out there who could disprove that statement, one thing is clear: you can’t build an empire without a blueprint (or at least a healthy endowment). And as a prescient New Yorker piece revealed last month, Ternovskiy got caught with his pants down in that regard.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

Impossible as it may seem, MapQuest used to set the gold standard for online map services. Then Google Maps and Bing Maps ran ‘em off the road like a couple of Spy Hunter bosses.

With today’s launch of the new MapQuest, the veteran company is back like Pontiac to reclaim its booty. From the fresh new look and feel to the simplified UI, the new MapQuest seems to be positioning itself as a sensible alternative to its feature-rich, UX-poor competitors.

A decade can be a lifetime in internet years, though, and many venerable platforms have seen mixed results from recent reboots. What do you think: will MapQuest follow Flickr’s road to redemption or careen down Friendster’s road to nowhere?

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

As Ebay has shown us, people will buy anything from lamps to Lambos on their mobile devices. So why is it that only 12% of the world’s top 500 retail sites are optimized for mobile?

The economic downturn shoulders a large part of the blame for the slow pace of mobile monetization. But as the old adage goes, you have to spend it to make it. And if Gartner’s prediction that total transaction value for mobile will hit $245 billion by 2014 is right, there’s plenty to be made — especially if you stay ahead of the curve.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

As you may have heard, Twitter and the F.T.C. have officially kissed and made up over that whole security/privacy brouhaha. Considering the fact that recent security breaches jeopardized the POTUS’ account, it seems Twitter made it through this debacle relatively unscathed. In fact, given Obama’s recent comments about Twitter becoming the new red phone, it appears the executive branch may have other plans for the social network. In your face, F.T.C.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

As you may have heard, Twitter and the F.T.C. have officially kissed and made up over that whole security/privacy brouhaha. Considering the fact that recent security breaches jeopardized the POTUS’ account, it seems Twitter made it through this debacle relatively unscathed. In fact, given Obama’s recent comments about Twitter becoming the new red phone, it appears the executive branch may have other plans for the social network. In your face, F.T.C.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »

Of course, you didn’t say that out loud. Didn’t have to, thanks to Avoidr.

Sure, secretly snubbing part of your Foursquare following is a bit cold. So is tuning out check-ins. Sometimes friendships are just complicated like that.

Posted via email from RPPL | Comment »