review

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

I introduced myself to a friendly woman with a British accent at the CommunityNext conference in Palo Alto and learned that she was from a company call “Moo” that makes mini business cards. She quickly produced a white box of cards and since that time, I have fallen in love with Moo and their little cards. Here’s why.

Moo is a good idea
Business cards are so popular and useful, but often so cookie-cutter lame. I can't get over how many people hand me a card and then apologize for making it at home the day before.

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

Size isn’t the only difference. Moo has a relationship with Flickr, the photo sharing service and you can choose to put your very own photos on the back of your Moo cards. You can have 100 completely unique cards for about $20. Here are the backs of a handful Sachi's Moo cards. She used 40 different photos:

Moo is good technology
Moo service with Flickr is elegant and usable. It’s also a great example of an API in action. If you’re not familiar with an API, it means that web site (A) let’s web site (B) use it’s functionality. In this case, Flickr has made it possible for me, a Flickr member, to see my Flickr photos from my sets and tags on the Moo web site. This enables me to select my photos from Flickr using the Moo interface. It works like this...

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo is a quality product.
Sachi just got her cards today and mine are on the way soon. We’re both excited about being able to hand out the cards with photos on the back that represent a story. That’s what cards should do – create conversation or tell a story. Moo does that. Go get some.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

Moo Cards are the Most

leelefever — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:45:51 -0400

Moo has created a demand for a new kind of card that is about 1/3 the size of a normal card and offers the possibility that cards can relate more than data. Moo cards can start conversation.

You go through the photos and select the ones you want to use. You can choose up to 100.

Then You select the placement of the photo for the cards. You can do vertical or horizontal orientation.

Then you add details for the other side. This can include the photo's info (date taken, name, etc.) and free text fields.

Moo is fun and personal

Like Flickr, Feedburner and others like them, Moo communicates in a personal, funny and engaging way.

When you finish the order process you see:

And when the cards arrive you see a card tucked into the package that says:

It doesn't cost anything to communicate like a person.

The Future of TV? Inside the Venice Project Beta

leelefever — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:36:48 -0500

The Venice Project (TVP) is a new online video application from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis - the team who brought us Skype, which was sold to eBay for over two billion dollars in 2005. So, not only does the team have resources, but an amazing track record. This time, they are focused on merging the best of TV and the Internet. From what I’ve seen so far in the beta, they are off to an amazing start. I’ve only been playing for a day or so but I want to tell you about my first-blush experience. I do not certify accuracy at this early stage.

Getting Started

After downloading the application (yes, application – it is not browser based) it checked my system compatibility and I was rolling. The first striking part of the experience is that it opens in full-screen mode and the iconography looks to be inspired by Superman’s kryptonite crystals (called “dancing crystals”). Within a few seconds, I was watching full screen video. A quality full screen experience is a big goal of TVP. I noticed that when I put my mouse over the screen, a few things appear.
(All screenshots are approved and can be found here.)

They are:

My Channels – For now, The Venice Project comes with about 30 channels pre-loaded. When you click “My Channels” a translucent menu appears enabling you to peel through your channels. You can add channels via the “Channel Catalogue”, also displayed. The selection of current content is reasonable – action sports, celebrity, comedy, gadgetry, etc. Some content is shown with short pre-roll ads. This selection is not reflective of post-beta channels.

TVP Player: At the bottom of the screen are controls for the player, including the ability to skip programs, change channels and a search box. A search for “comedy” produced a display of comedy shows sorted by type (best hit, animation, short). You can play a show directly from the search results or get more information. The player has a button for “standby” that minimizes the whole application to the system tray. When opening, it opens quickly and begins playing immediately. While playing, you can rewind a show, but you cannot skip forward.

My Venice - My Venice is the most impressive part of the experience, but requires full screen mode. This is where TV becomes social. “My Venice” is run by a set of plug-ins that place little translucent widgets on the screen that disappear and reappear with a mouse click. You choose how many plug-ins to use. The video keeps playing behind the widgets as they appear. The choices are:

Rate It: A five-star rating system related to the content you are viewing (ratings go from Terrible to Awesome!!)
Channel Chat: Displays how many people are watching a channel and enables chat between the viewers.
Blog ticker: Posts from TVP beta blog in scrolling ticker form.
News/RSS Ticker: An RSS feed reader that displays in scrolling ticker form. I could add a feed from Flickr (comments), but not a Feedburner feed.
IM Sign In: If you have a GTalk or Jabber account, you can sign in from inside TVP and chat while watching. Your IM status displays what you are watching. No integration with Gmail yet
Notice Board: Info, notices about the TVP Beta, in normal paragraph form.
Clock: A digital version of the face of a clock

It looks a little like this:

The widgets can be moved around the screen to any position, including stacked on top of one-another. I find it a little cumbersome to navigate from the screen of widgets back to the viewing screen. You have to click a near ubiquitous little circle at the upper right that acts as a “return to viewing screen” button. I am most impressed with the IM, chat and RSS feed integration. I expected to be able to sign into Skype chat, but no. The widgets remind me of aggregators like Netvibes or Pageflakes that bring together information like weather, stockquotes, rss feeds and email into one application. My guess is that there will be many more plug-ins in the future.

The Viewing Experience:

TVP is currently organized into channels with each channel have a few programs, all streamed into TVP. The user does not view any content from a local file. A goal of TVP is to reduce the load time when switching channels. From the TVP player itself, or "My Channels", you can click through channels until you find a program you like. When switching channels, the dancing crystals appear while the show loads. The load time I see right now is about 2 seconds for an ad to load (not all shows have ads) and about 4 seconds for the show to load. Video quality seems to depend on the show. An action sports show was pixilated while music videos look quite nice. The overall quality of the video is not TV quality. I cannot imagine this on a big-screen TV.

Impressive, But It's Early:

TVP is still in beta and has some issues still, but The Venice Project is a very slick implementation of a new kind of peer-to-peer based video network. What’s not clear to me now is when and how users will be able to submit user generated (You Tube-style) video content. Right now it appears to be a new pipe for more professionally produced content. In order to be truly disruptive, there has to be a mechanism for individuals without media credentials to be rewarded for quality work. I’ll be very interested to see what develops as they move toward the long tail of amateur video production. And then there's the copyright issue. This will be interesting.

See also: Om Malik at NewTeeVee on the technology behind The Venice Project.

Mobile Blogging via Treo 650

leelefever — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:34:04 -0500

I've been geeking out a lot on all the things we can do with gadgetry on the trip. You might remember that I first posted about a device (the i-Mate PDA2K) back in June that I thought would be good for mobile blogging.

I've been using a PalmOne Treo 650 for the last couple of months and I think it's going to be the close-to-perfect gadget for our needs on the trip.

Over at TwinF I posted a bit about all the capabilties I've been testing.

Tags: twinf, gadgetry, geek, mobile, moblogging