This holiday season, touchscreen tablets and smartphones were both essential gift shopping tools as well as coveted wish list items. No longer just a consumer product, touchscreen technology is emerging as a key device for retailers who seek to integrate a familiar sense of digital independence with a more interactive (read: immersive) in-store experience.

Barneys New York CO-OP Cafe: The CO-OP floor of Barneys New York on Madison Avenue recently re-launched with its first genes@co-op café. Traditional coffee shop vinyl booths and plastic menus have been abandoned in favor of a single glass-top banquet table containing 30 touchscreen computer tablets. Targeted at rushed shoppers, the communal table allows diners to scan the interactive menu and immediately place their orders directly from their seats. For Gen Ys who are naturally adept at multitasking, the tablets also provide them with the opportunity to read articles from the Barneys New York online publication—and, naturally, to shop the store’s inventory straight from their place settings.

Welcome to the first edition of Trendcentral First Fridays! First Fridays is a new monthly interview series in which we’ll be picking the brains of some of today’s most innovative entrepreneurs in the worlds of new media, technology, marketing, and beyond. The goal is to complement the cultural coverage we’re already delivering with behind-the-scenes insights from insiders who are making it happen. We hope you enjoy it!

Our first subject is James Gross, the co-founder of Percolate, a new platform that curates content based on a user’s network. The platform operates by linking with a user’s custom content streams (e.g., Twitter, RSS) and filtering out the most relevant bits, based on that user’s previous actions. For brands, the service identifies and creates content for them to share with their consumers—essentially giving companies a streamlined way to participate in the online conversation. Pretty genius, right?

Q+A with James Gross (Percolate):

If you had to choose one word or phrase to describe Percolate, what would it be?
Thoughtful

How do you define success for your enterprise?
Helping brands find their voice online. If Percolate does its job, brands should feel that they can use Percolate to identify and produce content at any scale they see fit. It should also be easy and fun to interact with your Percolator. Most enterprise software is terrible and that’s just sad, it doesn’t have to be that way. 

What is the one thing you wish you knew before you started Percolate?
How much it would cost to run our tech. Yes, it is true that certain types of technologies like storage have become cheap but computer processing is still very expensive and we do a ton of hard core data processing with the algorithms we’ve built.

What is the one thing you never want to hear (or, most want to hear) from a customer/user/client?
Your product is hard to use.

What compan[y]ies (other than your own) are you inspired by, and why?
IBM. The company is over 100 years old. They have learned how to survive and create a strong brand over the years. Something that is currently missing in the short term focused VC/Startup world.

Their mission has always been to service their customers with exceptional quality and they’ve always placed the spirit of technology at the center of their organization.

They were also one of the first companies to not discriminate against workers based on race, sex, or ethnic origin. They just wanted to hire the best people.

I’m also inspired by companies like WNYC Radio, Amazon, Patagonia, Eames Office, Tumblr.

What is the next big thing?
No idea. I just hope I can see it, hold it and know that it is going to make the world a better place for the people that are coming after me.

What is the worst business idea you’ve heard?
When I create an incredible business, I’ll let myself become a critic. Not before then.

This past spring brought forth a trend in which artists and entrepreneurs alike expressed their profound sense of collective gratitude. Months later, while unsettled sentiment about the current state of the world persists, portholes of positivity are going viral, demonstrating that even amid an unrelenting onslaught of downer headlines, escapism is still highly relevant to Gen Y.

Internet High Five: Sometimes the simplest websites can help people avoid forced participation in gratuitous repartee. For instance, Let Me Google That For You offers a reliably snappy comeback to mindless inquiries. The latest instance of such a site is markedly friendlier, however. Though Internet High Five’s signature graphic can be traced back a couple of years, the site has been making the online rounds over the past few weeks, including appearances on Swissmiss and Urban Outfitters’ global blog. Of course, those stuck behind a screen could just meet up in Hangouts to deliver a high five so seemingly real that, when going in for the slap, they can almost see the sweat on the recipient’s palm.

Long gone are the days when one would arrive at Blockbuster only to find every title in the New Release section checked out for the weekend. Lacking fresh titles to choose from, many customers would end up going home empty-handed and disappointed. Fortunately, with today’s glut of digital movie rental services, streaming platforms, and recommendation engines, those days are history. Here’s a look at three of the newest:

Zediva: Though one of Netflix’s main draws is its continuously multiplying selection of films, it’s still beholden to the release “windows” enforced by film studios when it comes to new DVD releases. Now, with new startup Zediva, hounds of the Hollywood machine can stream studio pictures online as soon as they are released on DVD. Registered patrons select titles from an online library—current selections include The Fighter, Love and Other Drugs, and 127 Hours. A $1.99 fee allows them to rent the DVD and a DVD player remotely, the latter of which streams the movie to a TV, computer or even a smartphone. Registration is currently full, but there is a waitlist for those who want to join.

If they’re not playing Angry Birds on their iPhone or catching up on the day’s headlines, more than a few bus and train commuters are burying their noses in a volume of The Millennium Trilogy. Engrossing as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may be, its linear print format could one day be seen as old-fashioned, as the digital age is ushering in dynamic new methods of storytelling that could augment the way we digest fiction.

SENT: Reading through your own email archives can be a pretty tedious exercise, but there’s something about the email format that lends itself particularly well to a slowly unfolding narrative. SENT is “the world’s first novel told by emails.” Penned by screenwriter Victor Levin (Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, Mad About You), one e-mail arrives in subscribers‘ inboxes daily. Similar to most other daily emails, the copy is both concise and engaging. But what sets it apart is the sense of voyeurism that comes from reading an ongoing exchange between two, albeit fictional, strangers. Though the email format probably won’t replace a paperback (or a Kindle) when it comes to beach or bedtime reading material, at the very least it gives subscribers a reason to be excited about checking one’s inbox at work.