The Instant Album product pre-selects 30 to 35 of the user’s best filtered Instagram photos, as determined by “likes,” and auto-generates an album with pages of photos grouped by time in an experience that strips out the complexities normally involved in the photo book creation process.

Those with a penchant for detail can lose themselves in the Instant Album-making processing if they so choose. Users can edit the album’s layout, drag-and-drop photos onto the same page, edit backgrounds, add artwork, customize text and font and transform each album page as they see fit.

The final result is an 11-by-8.5 inch hardback album that retails for $29.95 for 30 pages, with each additional page costing $0.99.

“We want to be the easiest photo album builder in the world,” says co-founder Blake Williams.

Keepsy, having released its first scrapbook builder for Facebook friends in December, happened upon a bigger pain point in the digital-to-physical photo album conversion process. “People don’t like to build photo albums,” says Williams, “because photo albums are a pain in the ass to make.”

That realization became the impetus for Instant Album, especially after Williams noticed that other developers were using the Instagram API for physical keepsakes such as prints, post cards and picture frames, but not yet for albums or scrapbooks.

For now, Keepsy’s keeping mum on its number of users and printed photo books, in part because it’s in the midst of raising another round of financing. Keepsy’s plans also include mobile applications that simplify and enhance the group photo album creation process.

Business is booming for Amazon. The company garnered $9.86 billion in net sales in Q1 2011, up from $7.13 billion in Q1 2010 and more than the $9.53 billion Wall Street expected. That wasn’t the only thing that rose in Amazon’s earnings, though. In Q1 2011, Amazon’s expenses totaled $9.54 billion, up from $6.74 billion a year ago.

The result is that Amazon earned 44 cents per share, far below the 61 cents per share analysts expected this quarter. Amazon is down 0.71% in after-hours trading.

Why did costs rise so quickly? While Amazon mentioned things like investments in its Web Services division and in new office space, the bulk of its expenses is likely from its hiring spree. In Q1 2010, Amazon had 26,100 employees (full-time and part-time, minus contractors). In Q4 2010 (just nine months later), that number rose to 33,700, and in Q1 2011, that number reached an astounding 37,900. That’s a 45% increase of its workforce in just one year.

What’s Amazon Doing?

We have to ask: why is Amazon hiring so many people? For the answer, all you have to do is look at the breakneck pace at which it has been releasing new products. In the last month alone, Amazon launched Cloud Player, unveiled a $114 ad-supported Kindle and created its own Android app store. The tech giant is also reportedly interested in entering the NFC mobile payment market.

Its rapid growth has also caused it a few headaches it needs to fix, including the issue that caused its cloud computing service to collapse.

It takes a lot of money and a lot of labor to fuel such an ambitious pipeline of products. Just the entry into the NFC mobile payment space would be a multi-million (or multi-billion) dollar endeavor.

And as Amazon has expanded outside of the ecommerce business, it faces stronger competition. It’s no longer worried about companies like Barnes & Noble. Instead, it’s competing against Apple, Google, Rackspace, Microsoft and other leading tech companies that have a lot more money in their pockets.

Amazon believes this is the right time to go after massive growth. It’s a classic strategy for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos: focus on long-term growth and prospects and ignore short-term earnings. It may upset Wall Street now, but Amazon has proven on multiple occasions that it knows how to create new revenue sources (AWS, Kindle) from scratch. Investors would be wise to bet on Bezos and his vision for the company.

After announcing in 2010 that Yelp would not likely go public for several years, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the company had put an IPO back on the table.

The crowdsourced local review site has not yet started the filing process, but it recently began searching for a CFO with IPO qualifications.

Yelp accepted a $25 million investment from Elevation Partners in January 2010 to expand its mobile app presence and roll out new check-in features. The company also added a daily deals component in 2010, but most of its revenue still comes from local advertisers.

Despite growing competition in the local space from check-in services and daily deal sites, Yelp has reported a consistently growing userbase.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the startup now reports 50 million users across its web and mobile platforms. When we last checked in this February, the company reported 45 million users, up from 39 million users in November. Yelp has not, however, reported that it is profitable.

Profitable or not, Yelp has good company among its tech peers in considering the time right for an IPO. Pandora, Demand Media and LinkedIn have all recently joined the public market, and both Facebook and Groupon are expected to follow soon.

Made by Victor Petit — who was looking for an internship but recently scored one — this resume is reminiscent of band Cassius’s video and accompanying app [iTunes link] for “I Love You So.” It features a QR code in the middle of a picture of a face (on the back of a printed resume) that unlocks a video of the missing mouth on your phone.

“I realized during my previous job search that getting an interview at a communication agency is the hardest part of the process,” says Petit. “I tried to create a CV that would enable me to express myself vocally as soon as they read the paper version. The combination of a sheet of paper and a QR code felt like the best way to reach that goal.”

We’re not sure what exactly Petit’s skills are from the video alone — it has no sound — aside from being extremely awesome.

Barnes & Noble announced major upgrades to its Android-based Nook Color Monday — including Flash, email and an app store. The ability to install new apps on the device made it more tablet-like than ever, at the favorable price of $250.

Nook Color owners can purchase and download Graphicly’s graphic novels as individual apps — such as Archaia’s Mouse Guard, Wanted from Top Cow/Image, and BOOM! Studio’s Irredeemable.

“We’ve worked with Barnes & Noble to specially craft these apps to be optimized for reading on the Nook Color,” writes a Graphicly rep on the company blog, “and I’ve got to say, they’re pretty sweet.”

The startup just rolled out its Android app in February. Prior to that, Graphicly had been available on desktops, iOS devices and in the Chrome Web Store as a launch partner.

Graphicly is also bringing special multimedia content to those platforms. The startup recently told us it was collaborating with heavyweights such as Stan Lee to bring features including videos and soundtracks to popular comic franchises.

Comic book fans: does the Graphicly app cast a new light on the Nook Color for you? Let us know in the comments.