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" This week the New York Times Research & Development Labs launched a new tool called Compendium, which lets readers "use articles, imagery, videos, and quotations to tell your own stories using New York Times content." A good comparison might be Storify for a single source's content, or Pinterest with more text."

"Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, which develops social games for major motion pictures like The Hunger Games, said the in-game ad market presents both huge opportunities and new risks for brands and agencies. He cited statistics from NPD and said that there are almost 200 million online gamers out there who play games for an average of 13 hours a week. Yet, the majority of ad spend still goes to TV or banner ads and only a fraction to games, he noted. "How are we going to close that gap?" he asked. The discussion was organized by SponsorPay, a Berlin-based engagement advertising company whose application rewards users that watch an ad with virtual currency and other goodies. SponsorPay is one of a handful of companies out there including SocialVibe, Flurry and WildTangent seeking to help games developers monetize their product and brand advertisers engage consumers with such ads. Games entrepreneur Wilson Kriegel, formerly with Zynga, addressed this potential by discussing his involvement with mega-hit Draw Something, an online drawing game developed at his former company OMGPop, which Zynga acquired in March. The game allows people to draw things and share them with their friends. Since its launch early in 2012, it has seen over 90 million installs, 10 billion drawings created and was a top trending topic on Twitter.  Companies including McDonald's, Disney and Sprint have incorporated their ads into the game. Kriegel said that ad features including in-game banners, game features and in-game call to actions seen a clickthrough rate of 1 percent to 10 percent-unheard of in an industry where average CTRs are 0.7 percent."

"Walmart began recruiting top Silicon Valley talent and acquiring start-ups last year. For instance, Walmart acquired Kosmix, a company that specializes in making web design more seamless, for $300 million. That team has been working for over a year to fix Walmart's systems and improve its website.  Walmart is investing in the "social gifting" market. A year ago, Walmart launched "Shopycat," which makes gift recommendations based on friends' Facebook profiles. The site is now called "Walmart Gifts" and allows customers to log in and get personalized recommendations based on Facebook and Twitter profiles.  The retailer got a better search engine. A dozen top engineers took 10 months to build it, and while the company won't discuss sales figures, they said the new system is more user-friendly. "If you search for cotton socks now, you'll actually find them," Manjoo writes.  Walmart is trying to lead the charge in same-day shipping. Its at an advantage considering that 96 percent of Americans live within 20 miles of a Walmart.  Walmart is investing like crazy in its mobile app. "Walmart imagines that as you go through an average day, you'll remember things you need--milk, bread, a new tennis racquet, a toy truck for your nephew's birthday--and tell the voice-enabled Walmart app. The app will list each item's location inside your local Walmart and include product info; eventually, it will also learn your preferences and offer recommendations. And once you're actually in the store, you'll be able to summon an associate to help you," Manjoo says. "

"Ingress, the Alternate/Augmented Reality (AR) game from Google's Niantic Labs, is a major evolution of mobile gaming. Apparently, it's also a good way to get arrested. According to a post on Reddit (I know, I know - but stay with me on this), an Ingress player in Ohio was detained by police for his in-game actions. Specifically, he was "hacking a portal" near a police station. His phone had technical difficulties, which led him to linger by the portal/police station for a bit, catching the eye of local law enforcement and leading to the detention. After the original post, other Ingress players responded with similar stories. One aroused suspicions by wandering around an empty parking lot at night. Another, trying to hack a portal next to an air traffic control station, had to run from the local sheriff. A third was called in for questioning after hacking a portal outside of a "high-traffic drug area.""

"In the case of Electiongrams, NBC is relying on a start-up called Chute that provides back-end tools for large-scale photo management to brands and large media companies. Chute helps its clients pull in photos that people share through email or sites like Facebook, but also offers human and automated moderating tools."

"But someone must still curate all of this citizen journalism, and that's where a group called Video The Vote comes in. A member of a network of voting rights groups known as the Election Protection Coalition, Video the Vote wants anybody who notices voting problems to document the situation and bring the footage to its attention. "In an era of partisan voter purges, onerous ID requirements, and organized intimidation, it's not enough for citizens to just cast their ballots," says Matt Pascarella, Video The Vote's campaign director. In addition to collecting citizen uploads, he'll field a national network of his own videographers to target swing-state hotspots."

"In the UK, Domino's has launched what it's calling Pizza Box Office, an initiative giving online pizza orderers their choice of complementary movie streamed to PC, Mac or tablet (release). The initiative is designed to incentivise ecommerce orders and illustrates how digital movies, like music tracks before them, can now be used as the auxiliary content of wider marketing campaigns."

Cool, new way to wait for a table instead of a buzzer or phone call. 

Called Smileage, the app syncs with Google+ so others can monitor particular trips, and draw in data, comments on photos from all the phones which are synced with the car during any given journey. Users are awarded Smileage points for completing certain tasks, such as uploading photos. Even passing other VW's count, as the app creates a little 'punch' every one is passed on the road.

Here's a video about Smileage: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/volkswagen-smileage-social-road-trips-powered-by-google/

Reddit experimenting with web programming by releasing an original video series called 'Explain Like I'm Five.' The three episodes draw inspiration from the subreddit of the same name, where users discuss complex political and social issues in a simplified manner.

Zappix aims to replace voice menus with a web-based visual option that determines the best department to connect them to before initiating the call.

A new startup called Deliv hopes to provide retailers with a new way to please tech-savvy shoppers, by offering same-day local delivery for the same price - or less - than having items shipped. Crowdsources peoples around the area to deliver for it. More about convenience than speed -- time of day is most important

Dawdle on an e-commerce site? Expect ads for that site--even the items you browsed--to stalk you for days, even weeks in ads on other sites. Now those so-called "retargeted" ads are going somewhere else: Facebook's news feed.

"But advertisers have loads of their own offline data from existing customers that they have not been able to use to target search ads. Conversions API allows those advertisers to upload phone numbers and in-store purchase data and use that information to target search ads through DoubleClick, Google's search ad system. Google's announcement was thin on details. It says advertisers can now "upload new conversions to account for in-store transactions, call-tracking, or other offline activities, or edit existing conversions to account for discounts, returns, credit, or fraud.""

"According to their writeup, Disney has partnered with a company called Jaxx to create a line of toys that can be recognized by phone or tablet apps, then trigger animations based on Disney's movies or other properties. In the example seen by Reuters, pointing an iPad camera at a set of Little Mermaid-branded bongo drums will cause the crab Sebastian to come on-screen and perform a song by "playing" them. Specific animations could also be used to sell the products in stores, like an animated Tinkerbell who flies out of her box when shoppers look at her with a smartphone camera."

Quadstreaker is a location app based not around nudity (though levels in the game are called "bare," "undercover," "commando," etc.), but around connecting real-world "streaks" by physically visiting square areas on a map grid. The point is to go lots of places in order to fill in your own world map and compete against friends.

But despite a lot of effort, social commerce (also called F-commerce) is still very much in its infancy - people aren't primarily using Facebook or Twitter to make purchases, even if friends are influencing what they buy.