Getting shoppers to touch your product in a store gets you that much closer to the cart. For a new, lighter brand of cat litter, a mobile marketing campaign was aimed at getting the buyer to lift the package and discover its core attribute.

Moms say they will be using their phones in-store this holiday season. But retailers who want to grab their interest had better come armed with a deal.

Facebook failed to buy Snapchat as it continues to chase its fleeing coolness. But mobile is so beyond Facebook in helping people rethink and expand the social media language.

After all the fuss, Apple Maps still won the day in terms of iPhone use, if not consumer love. But Google is not yet pressing its case well enough. It isn't map accuracy. It is cross-screen synchronization and convenience that should sell their insurgency into iOS.

We often ask how mobile will extend the Internet into every cranny of personal and consumer life. Maybe that is only half the question. Maybe we should be asking how mobile renews the power of location and physical experience in ways that challenge digital virtual space.

The irresistible iPad Air is not a game changer so much as a game expander. Its size, manageability and raw power make the full-sized tablet a more tenable player in a number of other people's yards.

People and InStyle brand content from Time Inc. comes into Flipboard this week just as the arguments over the true value of aggregators to publishers heat up. The fact is that Flipboard, Zite and some others do a better job of presenting some legacy brands digitally than the media themselves.

As the IPOs mount and social media rolls out its monetization plans, the so-called user experience of mobile is becoming louder, more intrusive and chaotic. Is anyone thinking about what mobile media could be in our lives?

Voice interfaces are a long way from common use, for technical and social reasons. But our fascination with the idea of the amiable robot assistant probably tells us more about our ambivalence about the machines we covet.

HipLogiq's new social media marketing tool allows marketers to respond directly to public expressions of desire or intent on Twitter, and then leverages that influence. Cool -- but don't stop there. Let advertisers compete and bid for my attention.