Open up your mind and say, ahh...

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Each weekend, Mashable picks startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

Here we highlight three social applications that help friends share content and products.

SocialGift helps organize group gifts. Capsule is a private space for sharing and archiving content surrounding an event, and Thinng is a visual online pinboard for products.

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SocialGift: Collective Gift Buying Made Easy

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Quick Pitch: SocialGift helps coordinate group gift purchases.

Genius Idea: An easy-to-share landing page.

Mashable’s Take: Group gift-giving is an obvious pain. SocialGift makes it a bit easier by helping groups spread the word that a collective gift is being planned, helping them decide what gift to buy through a poll among paricipants, and handling payment. Users can browse items on the site to suggest one as a gift and can invite friends through Facebook, email or a link to the landing page.

A product called Let’s Gift It has similar functionality for gift buyers, but has successfully targeted brands such as 1800Flowers.com with a widget that allows them to install the functionality on their sites.

Getting collective buying widgets in front of gift-givers at prime online gift-buying locations — such as wedding registries — might be a better strategy than introducing them to a new online destination.

SocialGift says it will soon launch its own retailer widget.

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Capsule: A Content Box for Events & Trips

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Quick Pitch: Capsule is a platform for group event planning and communicating.

Genius Idea: An easy way to save the content surrounding an experience.

Mashable’s Take: Capsule is a private space where several people who are planning an event can chat and share content. Photos, comments and files are all saved in one streamlined conversation that is only shared with people who are a part of the “capsule.” Individuals can be notified of new posts via email or text message if they choose, but it’s not just real-time sharing and planning that the founders hope to capture.

“Every piece of content is captured and preserved within the context of who, what, when, and where — meaning revisiting those memories later is a more complete and rich experience,” explain its creators.

It’s hard to imagine too many situations in which Capsule would be significantly more useful than a Facebook group message. But if there is a demographic to whom sharing and documenting an experience across content forms is important, Capsule does make doing so easy.

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Thinng: An Instapaper for Products

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Quick Pitch: Thinng is an online pinboard for products.

Genius Idea: The extra “N.” (Just kidding.) A slightly more specific focus than Pinterest.

Mashable’s Take: Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site that allows users to collect photos around the web and put them on topic-specific boards. Someone could, for instance, create a board called “celebrities wearing yellow” and use a bookmarklet to add new pictures of yellow-clad celebrities either via URL or a bookmarklet. Other users can follow that board or easily add images to their own board.

Thinng works by the same concept, but specializes in lists of products (i.e. “Cool Men’s Clothing“) and is based in Australia instead of Palo Alto.

Though, like Pinterest, the site is still in private beta, the first 1,000 Mashable users who click this link can try it out.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

This is the first part in a short series to introduce The End of Business as Usual…

Change is inevitable, but it is rarely easy. Among the greatest difficulties associated with change is the ability to even recognize its need at a time when we can actually do something about it. Sometimes, when we finally realize that change is inevitable, the vision  or energy needed to push forward in a new direction is elusive. Or worse, when competitors recognize the need for change before us, we are by default pushed into a precarious position where our next steps become impulsive rather than strategic.

If you follow technology as avidly as I do, we can agree that the volume of emerging technology is both awe-inspiring and overwhelming. As new technology makes its way into into everyday life and workflow, certain devices, applications, and networks disrupt the norm and begin to impact behavior. It is this disruptive technology that over time, influences how people work, communicate, share, or make decisions. The question is at what point does emerging technology or new behavior become disruptive? And more importantly, what systems, processes, and protocol are in place that recognize disruption, assess opportunity, and facilitate the testing of new ideas? The time to answer these questions is now.

The reality is that we live and compete in a perpetual era of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt.

Nothing today is too big to fail nor too small to succeed. Disruption not only faces every business, its effects are already spreading through customer markets and the channels that influence decisions and behavior. What works against you also works for you. And, it is what you do now that defines your ability to compete for today and the future. You already recognize the importance technology plays in your business. That’s why you’re here. But recognizing the difference between emerging and disruptive technology and measuring its impact on your business, customer relationships, and products is a necessary discipline to successfully evolve.

The means to see the need for change is only surpassed by our ability to distinguish opportunities for transformation and innovation. This isn’t just a matter of survival of the fittest, this is a long-term commitment to earning relevance by consistently seeing what others don’t, listening to the needs of customers, and delivering experiences that are worth repeating and sharing.

So, who’s next…to either succeed or fail as a result of disruption? Share your observations, predictions, and reasons in the comments below as they will drive the creation of the next video.

#AdaptorDie

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: TwoSides

Quick Pitch: TwoSides makes it easy to see every side of an issue and compare viewpoints with others.

Genius Idea: See how your viewpoints match up against the presidential candidates.

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The world would be a better place if everyone looked at every side of an issue. Or at least that’s the premise behind TwoSides, a startup launching this week as a social debate platform.

TwoSides provides web denizens with a place to view all sides of an issue, share their viewpoints, and see how their viewpoints match up against those of other site users or the 2012 presidential candidates.

The site centers around user-created Issue Pages. An issue could encompass anything from a political hotbed issue such as gay marriage to something more predictive like the success of the Kindle Fire.

You can either vote to agree with one of the existing viewpoints of an issue, add your own viewpoint, and share or curate evidence to support your points-of-views and potentially persuade others. All viewpoint votes are tallied and displayed in colorful consensus charts.

The more you agree with viewpoints, the better you can compare yourself against friends and other TwoSides others.

The site, explains founder Jono Lee, was born out of his own personal frustration with surfing the web to research all sides of an issue. “There’s a huge problem with trying to find balanced information on the internet,” Lee says.

And while TwoSides users double as Issue Page editors — who will bring their personal biases to the site, no doubt — the point is to foster informed discussions and debates where all viewpoints are represented.

The just-launched product, however, suffers from a small user base and seemingly low levels of activity. A majority of issue pages have only attracted a handful of votes, for instance, and even fewer users are adding their own evidence to back up their views.

The young startup hopes to sidestep the problem with its Election 2012 campaign. The module encourages you to vote on election issues to see how your viewpoints stack up against the 2012 presidential candidates, debate the issues or just learn more about them.

“We want to help increase tolerance and help people be more informed,” Lee says. “We want to eliminate a narrow-minded way of consuming news.”

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

When we were kids, “driving” involved a pedal car, and Lego hadn’t even debuted Star Wars-themed setups. Now, as part of a driving school for kids ages six to 12 (!), Ford has debuted a bright red Explorer made out of Legos.

The car will mark the entrance to the Ford Driving School at Legoland Florida, where kids born in years as recent as 2005 can drive electric cars on curbed roads, reaching speeds as fast as three miles per hour.

Sure, some pint-sized gearheads visiting the new Legoland might wish Ford had brickified a Mustang or an SVT Raptor instead of the car their mom probably drives them to school in, but the Lego Explorer is still pretty cool.

For one, it came out of the Torrance Avenue assembly plant in Chicago and was created by the same engineers who build the regular Ford Explorer. The Legoed Explorer took 22 people over 2,500 hours to build out of 380,000 Lego bricks. It rides on a 768 pound aluminum base and weighs 2,624 pounds.

Oh yeah — and it’s made out of Legos.

Photos: Ford