1. It didn’t take long for Hyperlapse, a new, stand-alone app for time lapse videos, to reach the #3 spot in the app store. Created by the team at Instagram, the app has a sleek, simple user experience that belies the sophisticated capabilities under the hood. At right, my first attempt to magically speed up traffic in Harvard Square. Click to view on Instagram.
2. A few weeks back, it looked like Google was going to buy Twitch, the livestreaming platform for videogames — much to the consternation of the site’s 55 million users. This week, Amazon picked up Twitch for just under $1 billion. Here’s why.
3. One way to visualize the impact of the Napa Valley earthquake is to take a look at how many people woke up. How would you do that? By charting anonymized user data from the Jawbone Up API.
4. What makes the most shareable content on social? KISSmetrics’ marketing blog shares useful specifics including word count for various platforms, and the optimal length for Facebook (just over 4 minutes, apparently). Longform content can spread, but articles must be formatted in a way that’s easy to read, with lots of visuals interspersed with the text.
5. This clever project meets a need we didn’t know we had: one pagers for tech trends. Each one-pager comes in both a long and a compact version, with useful charts and must-reads.

Weekend fun:  How can you make Game of Thrones even geekier? Add in some old school video game sound effects. You’ve been warned: serious nostalgia trigger for gamers over 30. Fun fact: there are now more adult women gamers than teenage boys.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up to get a weekly email.