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.

Name: JumpTime

Quick Pitch: JumpTime analyzes the economic value of content based on both its own advertising value and the advertising value of pages to which it directs traffic.

Genius Idea: A new metric for measuring content value.

At first glance, popular web content translates to profitable web content. But after setting economists and computer scientists to work on modeling the reality of the situation, JumpTime begs to differ.

The company launched a product in 2009 that measures a web page’s real-time value based not only on how many times it’s viewed and how much advertisers have paid to be placed on it, but also on how good the page is at directing users to other valuable content on the site. In many cases, content with low appeal to advertisers still adds revenue to the overall website by leading more visitors to pages with higher appeal.

This was the case, for instance, with one of Jumptime clients’ user-generated content sections. From an editorial and brand standpoint, the publication liked the section. But the ad team couldn’t sell it, and the publication planned to eliminate it — until the company measured its value using JumpTime’s metric, FloPower, and saw that it was actually one of the most valuable areas of the site.

“People would go from these areas to the articles with high ad costs,” JumpTime CEO Michele DiLorenzo says. “It was in the publication’s best economic interest to drive traffic to what had before been considered an area with zero value.”

 

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 selects startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we’ve focused on three new apps that help complete (or even inspire) daily tasks.

Any.DO is a social to-do list that’s easier to use than any other we’ve seen. Hailo makes hailing a cab a matter of checking in on an app, and photo game Onefeat inspires creative feats throughout the day.

Hailo: A Network For Taxi Drivers And Passengers

 

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 selects startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we’ve focused on three startups that have created technological shortcuts to simple tasks.

Manpacks lets men skip the department store with subscription underwear. Snipreel edits YouTube videos within the YouTube player, and Wishgenies sources gift recommendations from people with the same interest as the intended recipient.

Manpacks: Subscription Essentials for Men

 

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 selects startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we’ve focused on three startups with innovative takes on social buying.

OpenSky is a Twitter-style personalized shopping site. LikeBids motivates users to distribute coupons for brands, and MyTab helps users fund trips through their social networks.

OpenSky: Twitter for Curated Shopping

Quick Pitch: OpenSky is a shopping site that is curated by the tastemakers that individual users “follow.”

Genius Idea: A customizable online shopping experience.

Mashable’s Take: OpenSky has cleverly blended recommendations, editorial endorsements and flash sales.

When users sign up, they can chose from a list of about 60 tastemakers to “follow,” including celebrities such as Molly Sims, Padma Lakshmi, Kristin Cavallari, Bobby Flay and Tom Colicchio. Each tastemaker chooses products to recommend to followers and writes a short explanation of why each item was chosen. He or she runs a special on about one item a week that gives followers a 20% to 60% discount on the item.

Since launching in April, OpenSky says that it has grown 50% month over month. The site has about 600,000 users, and its CEO John Caplan, the former president of About.com, seems to be thinking big.

The startup announced a $30 million round of funding this week, bringing its total amount to $49 million.

LikeBids: Group Buying Unlocked by Facebook “Likes”

Quick Pitch: LikeBids distributes coupons through Facebook.

Genius Idea: A built-in motivation for word-of-mouth marketing.

Mashable’s Take: LikeBids users win coupons by Liking them and encouraging others to do so. When a threshold number of Likes are reached, a coupon is emailed to everyone who clicked.

The advantage of distributing coupons this way is that even participants who aren’t particularly excited to spread the word about a discount end up doing so anyway. When they Like the coupon, it’s automatically posted on their wall and friends’ feeds.

LikeBids has also built in a motivation for users who are excited to spread the word. Each coupon has a price attached to it for the person who motivates the most people to Like it by sharing a unique URL.

Right now LikeBids’ offerings are pretty sparse (there are exactly three coupons available: Papa John’s, Kohl’s and Sephora), but the startup has set up a situation that encourages users to promote brands to their friends. If those users indeed appear, that’s an appealing proposition.

myTab: a Social Travel Gift Card

Quick Pitch: myTab aims to make group gifting travel easier.

Genius Idea: A travel search engine that automatically takes into account your budget.

Mashable’s Take: Let’s say you want to go on a trip and it’s your birthday. MyTab hopes you’ll set up an account on its site, and share a link that allows your friends to chip in to its cost by purchasing a virtual currency it refers to as “myCash.”

You can then use a Kayak-like interface to book a flight and hotel based on how much “myCash” you have. If there are leftovers, you can re-gift them to friends.

Although we understand where myTab is coming from — group gift buying is a problem pervasive enough that several startups (and eBay) have developed solutions that make it easier. We fear, however, that this travel-focused solution only makes the process more complicated.

Image courtesy of istockphoto, barisonal

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.

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.

SocialGift: Collective Gift Buying Made Easy

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.

Capsule: A Content Box for Events & Trips

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.

Thinng: An Instapaper for Products

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.

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.

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: Tagstand

Quick Pitch: Tagstand is an NFC platform that simplifies the NFC stack for businesses and developers.

Genius Idea: Program and manage NFC stickers on the web.

Customers can purchase packs of stickers, and then use the Tagstand Manager to program — and reprogram as often they see fit — how those stickers function on objects in the real world. They can also track sticker usage.

Tagstand could theoretically, depending on the whims of the tag owner, allow a consumer with an NFC-enabled device to touch his phone to a sticker to check in on Foursquare one day and view a promotional video or product page the next. The point is clearly to commodify NFC technology — to package it up, sell it to businesses and marketers, and make it consumer-friendly in the process.

One problem: consumers aren’t yet toting around NFC-enabled devices en masse. But should that change — and research firm Juniper forecasts that it will — Tagstand, says Tagger, hopes its first-mover status will solidify it as a harbinger of the NFC revolution in the states.

In the right-here and right-now, Tagstand appears to be pulling in impressive sales and traction for a three-month startup in a nascent market. “We’ve had loads of developers and businesses contact us,” Tagger says. “We’re basically finding out what we think are going to be the first applications of NFC.”

Outdoor marketing is surfacing as the most popular application, he says. A Tagstand customer in India, for instance, made a bulk purchase of 20,000 tags for $10,000. The customer plans to put tags on movie posters at malls and cinemas in India, he says.

Next on the agenda for Tagstand is to give startups access to NFC payments capabilities and release an API for its tag management system.

Tagstand is a graduate of Y Combinator’s summer of 2011 session. The startup is in the process of raising additional funding.

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.

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 hand-picks startups that we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week’s selection of startups have created mobile applications for iPhone and Android that offer a twist on the expected.

EyeEm is a mobile photo-sharing application unique in its ability to surface similar photos in real time. Life Is Crime mixes up mobile gaming with location-based gameplay, and Liquid Fare, perfectly suited for barhoppers, offers an updated interpretation of the mobile reviewing app.

EyeEm: Photo Capture for Photo Discovery

Quick Pitch: EyeEm is a photo capture, sharing and discovery app that learns your tastes from the pictures you take.

Genius Idea: Photo vibes.

Mashable’s Take: Berlin-based EyeEm puts a fresh twist on mobile photo-sharing with an app for iPhone and Android that emphasizes discovery.

Yes, the app does include filters, likes, comments and social sharing — staples in nearly every mobile photo application these days — but we think you’ll like it for its more refined qualities.

Filters, for instance, are applied in your camera’s view pane, even before you snap a photo. Photos are automatically arranged into photo albums called vibes, categorizing photos by either place, people or content. Plus, the app auto-tags your photos with location and activity descriptions, making manual entry completely optional.

Life Is Crime: Mobile MMO Set in the Real World

Quick Pitch: Life Is Crime by Red Robot Labs is a location-based MMO mobile game where players commit virtual crimes in real places.

Genius Idea: Combining social and hardcore gaming elements with location-based action.

Mashable’s Take: Developed by former executives at Playdom and EA, Life Is Crime tasks mobile users on Android (and soon iOS) to commit virtual crimes, perform missions, challenge other players to take over real-world locations and become criminal masterminds.

The game takes the high-octane elements of complex, narrative-based video games for consoles and PCs, throws in social gaming standbys like virtual goods and gameplay with friends, and uniquely places all of the action in your surrounding neighborhood.

Liquid Fare: A Mobile Wingman

Quick Pitch: Liquid Fare provides an easy way to find local bars, lounges and clubs organized by age, style and attractiveness of the crowd.

Genius Idea: Mobile users crowdsource their way to a better night out on the town.

Mashable’s Take: Liquid Fare for iPhone and Android promises to be the compass that points you towards the hippest hotspots nearby, depending on your personal preferences in crowd style, age and attractiveness.

The application crowdsources its establishment assessments, encouraging users to rate the scene at venues they visit.

Liquid Fare, from the New York-based startup of the same name, was first piloted in New York and San Francisco. The application rolled out for all audiences in the U.S. in August.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Roger’s Wife

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.

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 hand-picks startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week we’ve rounded up startups that are making new tools to help you shop, sell and run more efficiently.

Dibsie is a deal shopping site that learns your preferences, Lockboxer helps with pricing, inventory and sales, and Smashrun motivates runners with rankings and badges.

Dibsie

Quick Pitch: Dibsie is a visually pleasant shopping deals site that learns what you like.

Genius Idea: A new take on marketing discounts.

Mashable’s Take: Dibsie catalogs discounts across industries into one image-based browsing experience. As users hover, click and like items, it learns what they like and adjusts its recommendations accordingly. Users can also follow a particular business.

Many of the deals are non-exclusive sales, but it is nice to be alerted to them all in one place.

“Unlike unwanted ads in the margin of other sites, our visitors actually opt in — and want us to use their interactions on the site to make better recommendations,” explains CEO Garren Givens. “The products — which are essentially ads — become more like content (like a constantly evolving shopping catalog).”

Businesses can easily add their own deals with a self-serve dashboard (deals are reviewed by Dibsie before they are posted). It’s free for them to post up to 100 credits of deals while Dibsie is in beta, but eventually the site will charge companies either on a per-deal basis or for an unlimited membership.

Lockboxer

Quick Pitch: Lockboxer tells you how much your stuff is worth and helps you sell or donate it.

Genius Idea: Creating a log of possessions for insurance or moving purposes.

Mashable’s Take: At its core, Lockboxer is a price search engine. Users type in an item and the site returns both the prices it is selling for online. This functionality isn’t particularly handy, however, as the same can be easily accomplished on a site like Google Shopping, Amazon or eBay.

Lockboxer is aiming to take the process further by becoming an inventory management site for your stuff. As you look up prices, you can automatically add items to a master list. From here, you can select what you want to sell and post it directly to eBay or your social media accounts. You can also select items to donate and retain an estimate of their values for tax purposes.

Probably the most useful function of the site is a home inventory tool that encourages users to snap photos of each room in their houses and document their contents. This is something that can be done without Lockboxer’s aide, but the free site provides a template, cloud storage and prices for the items. Listing everything you own might seem low on the to-do list, but can become much more important if you need to use your homeowners insurance.

Smashrun

Quick Pitch: Smashrun is analytics for your running.

Genius Idea: Motivating runners with badges and rankings.

Mashable’s Take: For a relatively simple sport, running can involve a lot of data. Smashrun helps track distance, speed and duration of your runs by either connecting with a Nike+ product or inputting details about each run.

While other businesses like Runkeeper are already safely settled in a similar niche, Smashrun’s free service takes a different tone by rewarding runners with badges for milestone runs and showing them how they stack up against all other users in the database by distance, speed and frequency.

It also ranks individual runs against the user’s own history so that she knows, for instance, when she’s just run farther than ever before. Other fun data points include what day of the week and time of day a user most frequently runs and the longest break between runs.

It’s a fun way for casual runners to keep a log of their progress and share milestones.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Ed Yourdon

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 hand-picks startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products.

This week, we’ve rounded up startups that have put new spins on content creation and consumption.

Clipik uses a database of freelance editors to turn your home videos and old photos into movies, Mind The Book recommends reads in a novel way and Reelr.tv lets you create a music video playlist from your Twitter account.

Clipik Video

Quick Pitch: Clipik turns your home video and photos into one downloadable movie.

Genius Idea: Employing freelance video artists to create polished movies at a low price.

Mashable’s Take: There are are three standard paths for creating a keepsake movie to showcase stacks of home videos or chronicle an event like a wedding. The first, is to be a movie editor. The second, is to hire a movie editor. And the third is to feed your media to an automatic editing program like Animoto. These paths are respectfully unlikely, expensive and somewhat limited in design.

By using a database of freelancers, Clipik provides relatively high-quality videos like the one above that can include both video and photos for between $49 and $199. Users just upload their media and describe what they want done with it.

It’s like a Demand Media of home videos — not professional, polished, award-winning stuff, but perfectly passable for the purpose it serves.

Mind The Book

Quick Pitch: A book discovery site structured around questions like “How to be happy?”

Genius Idea: Organizing book recommendations in a new format.

Mashable’s Take: If you read with a purpose, Mind The Book makes a good discovery platform. It frames recommendations around questions such as “How to lose weight?,” “How to be a good father?” and “How to make money on the internet?”

Users can submit book suggestions as answers to each of these questions and vote other answers up or down. This works well if your reading habits follow this line of thought.

If you have a different sort of question in mind when selecting literature, for instance, “What’s a well-written, worthwhile book?,” the platform is less helpful.

Whichever camp you fall into, it’s worth checking out. The site’s database is still suffering from its newness, but it’s hard not to appreciate the idea.

reelr.tv

Quick Pitch: Reeler.tv turns your music tweets into a live video broadcast by matching songs to their YouTube videos.

Genius Idea: Easy curation and sharing of personal playlists.

Mashable’s Take: Creating a playlist on Reelr.tv can be done without ever visiting the site. Just tweet the title of a song along with the hashtag #nowplaying, and Reelr.tv matches it with a YouTube video and adds it to your Queue. Sort and order playlists when you have time, and then share or embed them anywhere.

It’s also easy to browse playlists from popular “TweeJs” or from tweeters in specific cities and add songs from them to your own playlist — or to tweet them out with a link.

The site launched in June with the name mTweeV, but changed the name after MTV wasn’t a fan.

It’s no pioneer in creating social playlists, but the tweet-to-add a song feature is a fun spin and a smart way for the service to introduce itself to new users.