Digital signage trends for 2014, and Instagram for the startup community

Every Monday, CommerceLab brings you a roundup of all the gamification, user experience and interactive display news that’s fit to print. (Or the stuff we liked best, anyway.)

While the CommerceLab team was away relaxing, turns out it was a busy holiday season. TeamStory is a new mobile platform for sharing pictures of startups. The app was started by Waterloo-based UX designers who noticed that while people talk a lot about startups these days, there wasn’t a space for those involved to talk about what it’s like being in the startup community. Well, now they have their own Instagram.

Over on his blog, digital signage expert David Haynes talks about the trends and technological developments that are about to change digital signage as you know it. It’s all speculative, of course, but we’re hoping some of these ideas take hold in 2014.

And speaking of disruptive trends in 2014, Fast CoLabs runs down the most successful apps of 2013—and looks ahead at what the new year might bring. Specifically: more freemium content!

Apps that prospered in 2013—and those that will in 2014.

And in Vancouver, a select group of kids are currently at work testing Mobile Kids: Monster Manor, an app that makes getting exercise into an addicting real-time video game. The app, built and instituted by UBC, lets kids play by doing everyday activities like walking to school or playing sports, which get translated into points and other markers of online success. The aim is ultimately to integrate it into elementary school curriculum in an effort to fend off obesity in children.