Holiday Heroics! Booo White Mugs!

Ok - so this is a blatant plug for rightsleeve.com, but this is just so cool .... and we think you will enjoy it.

Our creative team's latest holiday email blast is hilarious and really drives home what we stand for in this business - creative ideas and fun stuff that works for creative and fun clients! Calling all creative and fun clients!!

(oops - sorry, if we have offended the white mug crowd, but lighten up will ya?!!)

U3 smart drives - very cool

U3 smart drive technology is starting to gather traction in the market place. This technology (for now) has only been embraced by the early adopter tech crowd.


The concept is simple. U3 drives look like a regular USB flash memory stick BUT they have 1 differentiating feature - they feature software apps (word processing, email, etc software) that can be launched from almost any computer. The idea is that people in the future will only carry around their U3 smart drive and plug it into any computer. Their software apps and files will run from the smart drive. Data on the drive is encrypted so, if lost, security is not an issue. If this takes off, I am sure we will see much fewer laptops being lugged around on business trips.

This is a pretty profound technology and one that will push us further into the mobile computing space.

Read more here

Why is this relevant to our blog? My prediction is that we (and companies like us) will start to see a shift in the corporate gift space as we sell imprinted USB smart drives versus the standard USB flash memory drives that are so ubiquitous today. I give it 6-9 months before we see this shift in the corporate branded merchandise space. You heard it here first!

Flickr Moo .... Boo!

Here's my beef with buzzy web 2.0 sites. Despite rave reviews from in-the-know web evangelists, they still shaft the customer (on occasion).

Everyone loves these sites as they are community oriented and pro-consumer, but it does not do the consumer much good when transactions don't go through thus souring the overall customer experience. We have a big disconnect here.

So, to my point ... Flickr's buzzy printing site Moo can't seem to get its act together.

Here is what's wrong:

1. I crop every one of my 82 Flickr photos for printing on moo.com (a process that takes about 25 minutes ... but I will chalk this up to a creative 25 minutes so I am not griping). btw - the printable area drag and drop process is counterintuitive, but I figured it out in the end.

2. Proceed to the checkout screen - create an account, input credit card info, click proceed and it tells me my transaction has gone through (i.e., a bill is available for printing), BUT at the same time an error message appears.

3. I fire an email off to client service asking if my order actually went through (hey, this is web 2.0 - where is the IM option, or perhaps the ability to check my online account history). Anyways, client service responds in 2 days and says the order is no where to be found - it must not have gone through. Argh

4. So I try again. I repeat the cropping process (25 minutes of aggravation now - it's no longer fun and creative when doing it the 2nd time).

5. I proceed to the checkout and input my login and password at which point the screen freezes and I am out of luck. All that work for nothing. I quit.

6. Two attempts, 50 wasted minutes of cropping (why is my work not saved?) and no Moo cards.

The conclusion is that while I am all for web 2.0, community interaction, digital commerce and positive consumer experiences ... what's with all the hype when the site just does not work properly? This is fundamental and basic.

Moo - I know you are the current darling of the internet photo printing business, but wake up and make it a little easier for us wee consumers! I just want my cards!