Moo

New party venue!

They said it couldn’t happen, they tried to cancel it, but the MOO Party Is STILL happening this Thursday night at a NEW VENUE!

Yes, just 2 days before our brilliantly planned party, The Ambassador (our previous venue) decided to cancel it. Luckily, you can’t keep the MOO Crew down when it comes to a drink with friends, so the our new venue is The Vibe Bar, Brick Lane.

If you’re not sure where that is, you’re in for a treat. It’s a great venue, easily reached from Liverpool Street tube and rail station. Follow the signs when you get to the venue, and we’ll see you there! And Don’t get side-tracked by a curry on the way, save it for afters, ok?

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Sheesh! What a palava. See, non-Londoners, this is the chaos that ensues when the sun finally does come out…

Business Card Busy-ness

It’s all go at MOO Towers at the moment. We’re bug squishing (virtual, not literal), printing, packing and party-planning.

The party’s shaping up rather nicely, so we’re hoping it should be lots of fun. If you’re in London next Thursday, come along for a drink - and if you’re quick, a wee bite to eat. If last years was anything to go by, it should be full of lovely people - and if you don’t know anyone when you get there, you should definitely make a few friends before you head off home.

In the meantime, it’s really exciting for us to see the beautiful Business Cards you’ve been making. These are a few great photos we’ve spotted recently - and thought it would be nice to share:

Photographer David Porter used 10 of his own images to create these beautiful cards:

And these super-cute cards were made by Lori Tingey.

Nerea Marta used a company graphic for her cards:

While these cards by Stephen Collins combine both graphics and photography perfectly.

These beautiful photographs were printed on Business Cards by Hidde de Vries:

And finally this lovely collection, is by Arpad

But, in all this Business Card madness, we haven’t lost our love for MiniCards…
(this perfect photo is by Erin Mason)

Even if first sight of these cards, by Andrew Scott did make us want to run for our dear lives.

Parties and Pixels, Fun and Formats, You and MOO

It’s already been over a week since the launch of MOO Business Cards. After taking a quick recovery lie-down, we’ve been busy fixing odd things and gawping at the amazing cards you’ve been making.

There are a few things we’re still working on, so if you see anything odd, please bear with us. If it’s *really* odd then please contact us and let us know the details. Sometimes things happen that we just can’t replicate and it’s your great feedback that helps to make things better.

There’s now an online template for Business Cards, for those who’ve asked. Like the templates for other products it’s the right size in pixels, millimetres and dpi, all you need to do is add your image, hide the guides and save as a maximum quality RGB JPEG. We don’t have templates for the images to be used on the reverse as yet - we’re just in the process of whipping this up into better shape, squashing the odd bug, and adding a bit of functionality. These fixes should go live next week - so if you’ve had any problems, please accept our apologies and bare with us just a little bit longer.

Some of you have also asked about a PDF upload for the text side of the cards. This too is coming as fast as we can get it out there. When we have it all in place, we’ll let you know. (You know Text Business Cards are live now, right?)

As I mentioned, it’s been great watching the cards you’ve made so far get printed and packed. Also fun watching them pop-up in the Flickr pool.

These are some examples we’ve spotted:

Illustrated Business Cards by Askey Illustration. (Also a MOO Designer)

Great photo cards, by Doc18

Variety is the spice of life, by Trevira

and it’s all about the words, for Edd Dumbill, who used Wordle to make his cards.

But enough! Now it’s on to the even more exciting stuff.

MOO’s having a party on Thursday, July 24th in London, and you’re invited!

Yes! We’re doing it again. Last year we had the Hot and Sticky Summer Party and this year, we’re less confident about the weather (hello, London rain), but we’re partying anyway!

Its at the Ambassador, same lovely place as last time, and there’ll be drink, good company, and a lot of MOO Fun. You can find all the details on Upcoming and on Facebook too.

And one more thing:

Special offer for party people - place an order to collect at the party and get FREE shipping!

Use the code HACCJE on the payment page, which will give you the discount and tag your order. We’ll hand your stuff over on the night.

***Orders must be placed by Sunday 20th July***

Hope you can make it - we’re looking forward to seeing you.

The secret’s out: MOO Business Cards are here!

The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted this already, but for those who had to blink at some point yesterday - MOO’s launched Business Cards! As so many of you have asked for the MOO MiniCard magic just that little bit bigger, we felt duty bound to indulge you.

MOO Business Cards are a similar size to standard business cards, but with some very cool differences:

Unlike lots of business cards, MOO gives you the option of a different image on every one.
Using magic technology we’ve decided to call ‘PrintFinity’, you can have a different photo, logo or design on every card. So, when people ask you what you do, you can show them - everything! It’s a little portfolio in your pocket, a product catalogue, a trading card, anything you like.

You can buy your Business Cards in super-short runs
We’re an experienced bunch at MOO HQ. We’ve all worked in different companies before, and we still have the business cards to prove it. The traditional way is to buy business cards in batches of 250, 500, even 1000 or more, and no matter how hard you network, its impossible to get through so many before something changes - your phone number, your job title or even the company you work for. We realised if we still have stacks of old cards sitting about, you probably have too.

So, we give you the option to buy in smaller batches of 50:
- it’s more economical (much less waste)
- it gives you the chance to update your cards as you update your products or your details
- it’s greener - even if you’re using virgin stock, at least you’re not throwing it away!

And talking of ‘green’ - there are now two paper stock options available
We’re slightly obsessed with paper at MOO, and take a great deal of care looking for the best paper, with the best feel, print quality and outstanding credentials. We’ve decided on two different stocks for our Business Cards:

MOO ‘Classic’ - which is sustainably sourced and elemental chlorine free. Matt-laminated, it has a smooth and sturdy feel. It’s the same stock you’ve seen and loved on MiniCards.

MOO ‘Green’ - which is 100% recycled, 100% recyclable and biodegradeable. It’s totally chlorine free, uncoated, crisp white, and prints nicer than any other recycled paper we’ve seen. (And we’ve seen a lot.)

The cards come beautifully packaged
Every pack of cards comes with a free Business Card holder. Designed by MOO, the box is made of recycled pulp board and fits in a briefcase or bag. We’ve even included two (recycled) dividers too, so as you empty the box of your own cards, you can fill it up with the ones you’re given, without mixing them up. (Another problem we’ve had ourselves, that we thought it would be good to fix).

So, there you have it. MOO Business Cards - as nice as MiniCards, but bigger, and a little bit different. We like them, and we hope you’ll like them too.

Oh! And if you want to see what other people have been doing, check out our ideas pages. See what other people have made, and how you could use the cards yourself.

Bye, Kim!

You know that Ready Made had a shiny new facelift recently? You can browse and search packs, see the whole content of a pack in all it’s colourful glory, add images of pack-thumbnails to your own site, and add special tags to your photos of packs you’ve bought…

Well, it wasn’t just that the ‘front end’ (what you can see) that changed. A whole bunch of stuff at the ‘back end’ changed too. And there’s more planned - and all of it is rockin’. While the team worked together to make it all happen, the planning, thinking, occasional yelling, frequent cajoling (with cake), and general project management was done by Kim.

Ready with a smile, frequently patient-in-the-face-of-’arrrgh!’, Kim.

(Thank you to Matt Patterson for the photo)

The bad news is that she’s legged it off to new pastures. The good news is that we know where they are, and it’s not far! Cutting her teeth on one new project (MOO) has left her itching to get started on another, so she’s heading off to work on exciting things elsewhere. (And with friends of ours too! Although we’ll give them a *very* stern talking to next time we see them.)

As a little tribute to Kim, photos of her leaving do…
Mike was really upset she was leaving, but just about managed to fight back those tears:

Joy and Nicky took to drugs, in a bid to get them through…

While Alex, took to drink

Gordon wore shades to hide his true feelings (that and he was being helicoptered out later, clearly.)

Other people like Mex preferred to remember Kim with a smile. (And more alcohol - but lets not mention that as it’s almost out of shot).

And here’s the lovely lady herself, with a wee gift from the MOO Crew.

Farewell Kim! You will be missed! Come back and visit soon. (You can bring some apple cake with you if you like… no pressure. Just, you know, for old times sake :)

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Incidentally, one person missing from the photos is the never-normally-camera shy, Iain. We’re not sure what he’s been up to, but three things we do know are:
1) He’s recently got a new bike
2) A fire caused chaos at music festival, Glastonbury on Thursday
3) We found this photo:

Not drawing any conclusions or anything… just sayin’

Fond farewells, happy bonjours.

Our first intern has flown the nest. We knew this day would come - it’s kind of what interns do I suppose, but it doesn’t make it any better. Rui, who we introduced all those months ago has got a brand new job back in Japan. On the one hand, we’re really happy for her - the job sounds great - but we can’t help feeling a wee bit sorry for ourselves.

But, we shall let her speak for herself:

“Hi Moosters,
It’s very sad to announce that I have to leave MOO and cannot be one of the MOO staffs any more. I found a career opportunity at an international organisation, which deals with environmental problems in Japan. In spite of my position as a temporary staff, I stayed at MOO for a quite while, because MOO is very comfortable and I love all the MOOsters.

The MOO community is so cool, creative, kind, nice, supportive… well, I need 100 pages to describe how great you are. Thank you very much for all your supports, and wish you the best luck! Arigato!”

Rui, we will miss you! We’ve got someone waiting in the wings to continue your Japanese blog, but you know what? You’re a tough act to follow! Please keep in touch.

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And now, after after the rain, some sunshine. Julien, our guitar-hero-playing French intern has been getting out and about on MOO’s behalf.

Before we start, this photo might help you get a better feeling of Julien, and how he’s getting on at MOO. He’s the one with his hands in the air… (The one with the green glasses is Jakob - and you’ll be hearing more about him soon).

And here’s what Julien has to say:

“I wanted to share with you some of the things I’ve been doing as the (official!) French MOO ambassador. Well, I went back to France last week-end, and as I wanted to present MOO to a lot of people (I haven’t left my MiniCard Holder the whole week-end… just in case), I’ve attended a very cool bloggers’ event – and MOO were ’sponsors’ too.

We were around 30 people, discussing geeky stuff and gossips about the blogosphere. We spoke a lot, had (a few) drinks, and it was very very interesting. A lot of French bloggers already know us, but the ones who didn’t were really (positively) surprised. Have a look at some pictures! And you can learn more about it on the French MOO blog.

It was a real pleasure,

Julien.”

Photoshop wizards, sharing spells

We announced MOO’s API the other week - which allows people with just a little tech knowledge to create cool apps that integrate with MOO’s process. If you don’t have the tech knowledge but still fancy making something cool, you could try using Photoshop instead.

Two talented MOOsters, Dawn Mikulich and Aral Balkan have posted their creative Photoshop templates online. Each produce very different, but very cool results.

First up, Dawn. A talented children’s photographer based in Chicago , Dawn recently made this set of MiniCards:

With beautiful bright images, the cards are split into sections, perfectly showcasing several photos at once. Dawn has kindly put the template online - and it sounds like it’s going down a treat! If you use it, do let us know in the comments, we’d love to see how your cards turnout.

Next up, Aral. You might remember him from last year. He made MiniCards featuring the code needed to get the 100 most recent photos from Flickr into Flash, using SWX. They’re very cool - take a look

This time, he’s been making mosaics. (MOOsaics? Gah!)
Here’s a photo, taken by Relly so you can see what I mean:

Aral’s online template is pre-set to the correct dimensions, and is ’sliced for your convenience’. All you need to do is import your photo, make sure it fits in the document correctly and ‘Save for Web’.

jenschr has already tried it out - and got a great result:

Again, if you make cards like this, let us know!

And finally, many congratulations to MOO customer, Yves Snoeren. The Snoren’s have recently had a new addition to the family, in the shape of a beautiful baby girl. There’s been no time to waste since the birth however, as Yves has been racing about creating the birth announcements! With custom M&M’s and a cute little teddy, all that was missing was something small and funky, with the details. Luckily, MiniCards did the trick:

and they didn’t do it just the once - but many times!

Congratulations, from everyone at MOO :)

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Ps - our Flickr pool recently got it’s 6000th member! Congrats to Katie Strang… Now, who’ll be the 10,000th?

Your Webby, our chocolate

It’s funny when you look round, realise your CEO isn’t here, and only figure out where he’s gone by reading the national press. Luckily for us, the mention is in a broadsheet, and no, Richard isn’t embroiled in some tabloid fiasco. He’s been at the Webby’s!

The mention was in the British paper, The Guardian, where UK blogger Zoe Margolis was live blogging the event. Richard was there to pick up the People’s Voice Award (that’s you) for Best Service (that’s us). It was super cool for us to even be nominated, let alone win, so we can only thank you again.

The Webby’s are famous for various things, not least the fact they insist on 5 word acceptance speech. We were pleased to hear Richard used his 5 words wisely. Zoe reports:

“Next up, the British Moo.com: “They said print was dead.” Classy: us Brits rule, clearly.”

Classy? Us? Well… You know.

One last thing, before we stop showing off, the award itself:

And while we’re on the subject of print, and it’s lack of being dead, look!

Yes, believe. It’s chocolate, but printed with little versions of the MOO logo. No, we’re not branching out in business, just in waistline. Dan, king of the MOO Warehouse has friends in high places. His lovely friend Angela, who works for T Shirt Patisserie, made us these as a special treat. This shot is actually nothing short of a miracle, because seconds later, all the white chocolate truffles you see there were… gone.

Announcing the MOO API

One of those rare posts from the technology department. I’m very pleased to announce the MOO API. The API allows those with some programming skills to write programs that can specify all the data required to make an MOO product (including fully variable images AND text), and then redirect a user to the checkout process for that product.

At present, the API is in beta - we think it’s mostly done, but we might make a few changes before we ‘go 1.0′. We expect any changes to be backward-compatible at this point. What’s more, when we go 1.0, we’ll be sharing revenue back with the API key holders (and we’ll backdate for any packs made during the beta period). The exact revenue structure is still being worked on, and we’ll announce it nearer the time.

At moo.com/api, you can sign up to play, find the documentation, and join the developer’s mailing list.

So, what can I do with it?

Simply, if you have some images that you want people to be able to print, you can build an integration to connect up to MOO.

I’m more excited by things that people will make that we haven’t thought of, but here’s some things that have been done:

I hooked up the TheyWorkForYou.com API to our API to produce a stats-based political trading card game, a project I’ve been meaning to do for about 5 years now.

Dan Coulter (of phpFlickr fame) has written a PHP wrapper library that makes building MOO API applications really very simple indeed, and a couple of sample apps

Basic - add some images, make a pack. Basic, indeed.
Mosaic - takes a big picture and makes pack of minicard tiles from it.
Rainbow - makes a pack out of your most interesting flickr photos, sorted by colour.

Alberto from Tagmore has a 3D barcode sticker generator.

I’m looking forward to many more!

Enjoy.

Feeling a little drawn

We’ve got some great designers on MOO, and it has to be said, we don’t talk about them enough. Their work is vast and varied, ranging from the cute, to the scientific, the sarcastic and the scary.

Whilst browsing around our Flickr pool I spotted this great photo:

It’s by MOO designer Andrea Joseph. She’s been ordering a few of her own Ready Made packs, and photographing the printed artwork next to the original subject of the illustration. Look at this one too:

And some of the pens she works with:

The above MiniCards are all available as individual images - so you can mix and match with other designers, but if you’re a purist, get a whole Ready Made pack - they make a fantastic set.

Like many of MOO’s designers, Andrea has a blog, where she writes about her artwork as she creates it. All beautifully drawn, the attention to detail is really something special. I love this recent post and accompanying illustration describing her professional set up - ‘recently relocated from the armchair to the kitchen table’:

(Actually, looking at this again I’ve just spotted the bit about the MOO boxes, on the right! Do take a look at it a bit bigger)

Andrea is also involved in a project with other artists - an International Moleskine Sketchbook Exchange. If illustration is your thing, check it out - the artwork is amazing, and it’s such a great idea. I just wish I could intercept the post, and swipe the book when it’s done!