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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 handpicks a few startups we think are building interesting, unique or niche products. This time weve curated a list of lifestyle applications for our uber-social readers to gain even more fulfillment from their digital activities.If youve developed an affinity for Instagram, for instance, consider signing up for MorningPics to revisit your past photo moments. Love to IM with friends on Facebook and Google, but hate the clunky interfaces of mobile chat apps? Tap to Chat for iPhone and iPad should suit you nicely.Do you often miss the best of your friends Facebook updates? Try Feedkite for a traveled-filtered view of whats happening in your social graph. And, if you want to collect and save your entire social networking life, use Patchlife to automatically build a digital journal you can reference and add to on the web or iPhone.Patchlife: A Journal For Your Social Networking LifeQuick Pitch: Patchlife records all your online moments in digital journal entries.Genius Idea: A modern-day journal thats automatically written by your status updates, photos, videos and blog posts.Mashables Take: Digital denizens share photos via Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, recount significant moments on Twitter and share where theyve been via Foursquare. Patchlife weaves these disconnected status updates into interconnected colorful daily diary entries that document our lives.Use the web application to connect to the social networks that you use and Patchlife will import your content, sorted by date, and build out an interactive digital diary of shared moments that you can relive on the web or via the companion iPhone application. You can also use Patchlife to compose your own entries and attach links, photos and documents.The app reminds us of Momento for iPhone, but offers a slightly different take on social network journaling.Tap to Chat: Facebook & Google Chat for iOSQuick Pitch: Chat with all your Facebook and Google friends on the go.Genius Idea: A slick interface for lean-back IMing with friends via iOS devices.Mashables Take: Tap to Chat for iPhone and iPad, by Osmosis Apps, connects to Google Talk and Facebook to create an application experience that is centered around and optimized for instant messaging on mobile devices.Tap to Chats biggest draw is its elegant interface, but its also packed with fun features. You can view open chats, star conversations, change the color theme, quickly switch between chats and receive message notifications.The application, which costs $0.99, is proving to be quite popular with iOS users (we like it best on iPad). The startup says its seen more than 500,000 downloads of Tap to Chat in the past five months.MorningPics: Memories Via EmailQuick Pitch: MorningPics is a simple service that emails users each morning with an Instagram photo theyve taken in the past.Genius Idea: Relive past Instagram moments one day at a time.Mashables Take: Take a trip down Instagram memory lane every morning with MorningPics. The super simplistic application connects to Instagram to do just one thing it emails you a randomly selected photo you took in the past. The MorningPics daily email includes one Instagram photo per day, as well as all the associated comments and likes.Unlike other email, these messages dont require anything of the user, creator Brenden Mulligan explains. They exist to make a past memory more fresh, and hopefully give the user a nice way to start the day. Thats the goal.MorningPics is currently in private beta, but Mashable readers will be granted priority access.Feedkite: Follow Your Friends TravelsQuick Pitch: Feedkite is building a social travel graph by identifying & organizing all the authentic travel resources buried inside Facebook.Genius Idea: Surfacing friends trips and travels on Facebook.Mashables Take: Feedkite is a Facebook application that finds travel updates and photos of your Facebook friends. The app digs through the status updates of your friends to present you with a place and photo-centric view of where theyve been traveling.Use Feedkite to search and see where your Facebook friends have traveled, browse through photos of friends trips and explore a map of destinations where your friends have been. You can also see how youre connected to destinations, and can mark places to your destination wish list.Feedkite is ideal for those looking for an alternate way to consume their friends Facebook status updates and photo uploads.Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ozgurdonmazSeries Supported by Microsoft BizSparkThe 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.More About: bizspark, Feedkite, MorningPics, Patchlife, spark-of-genius, startups, Tap to ChatFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad Read More ...





