collagist.com

Collagist new design is almost here.  Here is a preview of the new home page design for collagist:

Some highlights for the new design:

• New logo
• Better use of the header
• Improved menu with drop downs (concept borrowed from Flickr; code courtesy of Candes)
• Slideshow of collages/pictures
• Overall, nice look and feel
• All menu items in the footer; so that you can easily find information

Let us know what you like and not like of this new look!  Now, the question is when is this going to be live on the site?  Pretty soon, I would say.  Our goal is to have the site updated for 08/08/08 coinciding with Olympics and some marketing efforts related to our site.
Again, please write back and let us know what you think.

Best

Collagist

Tags: features, website

Olympics are coming up fast.  The opening ceremony is scheduled for 08-08-08.  One of the sponsors started a website/campaign called America’ s Cheer.  You can submit a photo or video cheer on this website.  If you are sending a photo cheer you post it on Flickr and if you are sending a video cheer, then you post it on YouTube.  The site is sponsored by Bank of America.  It is pretty neat and some of the cheers are very funny. One of our favorites is a Spartans video cheer on YouTube.

You can also see how many cheers submitted by state and the types of cheers submitted.  We should have some photo collage cheers submitted as well from Collagist!

Go Team USA.

Collagist

Tags: contest, olympics

How and where do you store your photos?

In this blog post we want to cover the topic of photo storing.  For storing photos you have two options: 1.) Store on your local computer and 2.) Store online

Of course, each of these options has its advantages and disadvantages.  First, we want to write a little bit about the tools and options that are available to the users and in the coming weeks we would like to write a little bit in detail about these tools/software and what you can do with your pictures.  We would like to remind you to do more with your pictures.  And you would ask, do more? what do you mean by more and we would point you to Photo Collages, Posters, Canvas Prints… See, we want you to come back and use our services and we are pretty sure you will like what you get.

Ok, going back to the topic of photo storing.  We believe that having a plan to organize and use the above options is a great way to share and access your photos.  Storing to your local computer is by far the easiest way but not always the best way to share, print, and work on your pictures.  The picture transfer from your camera or memory card to the computer is the fastest way that is possible out there.  But, this does not offer you many tools, particularly for the MS Windows users, in terms of reducing the image sizes, tagging and emailing or sharing with others.

The good news is that there are many tools that are available out there, for free, to make the photo organization and management easy for everyone.  Some of the tools are Shutterfly’s Studio, Google’s Picasa, Adobe’s Photoshop Album, PicMe Sharing by Raiz Labs, and more.  We particularly like Picasa.  PCMag once wrote an article about Picasa to explain what is good about Picasa.

Picasa also offers options to store pictures online but you need to have Google Account.  There are many other options that would let you store photos online for free as well for a fee.  Some of these services are Flickr, Photoworks, WebShots, phanfare etc.

In the coming weeks we would prepare a list of all these services to make choosing easy for you.  Until then go out there and take pictures and enjoy them.

Collagist

Tags: storage, tools

August Eigth, 2008 otherwise called as 08-08-08 or 08/08/08. This is going to be a special day for many people and we want to sweeten it even more.

For someone who is planning their wedding, special event, having baby’s birth or any other memorable events this is going to special.  We, at Collagist.com, want you to celebrate this special day and want to offer a special promotion on 08-08-08.

To say the least, any orders that are going to be placed on that day are going to get free shipping on all our products.  And we are cooking even more specials and watch our upcoming newsletter for more information.  If you want to get notified on what is in store for 08/08/08 then head over here and sign up for Collagist newsletters.

Cheers

Collagist Team

Tags: 08/08/08, specials

Newsletters for Picture Lovers

We have just released the newsletter subscription to our customers. Look for the newsletter sign up box on our home page and sign up today. Or, directly go to the subscription page.

Currently, our plan is to publish newsletter once every two months. We think it is going to be quite valuable to our customers and would sure not clutter their inbox.

Newsletters will contain…

• tips on what you can do with your pictures
• special promotions depending on the time of the year
• updates on what is happening at Collagist.com

First newsletter will be going out on May 10, 2008. What are you waiting on now? Go ahead sign up now!

Collagist Team

Remeber, we want you to do more with your pictures.

Couple of cool tools for your pictures.
First one is Scrapblog and the other one is Animoto. Scrapblog is a little static but lets you create the scrapbook like projects with your digital pictures. There are many themes and scrapbook tools to choose from. Beware, it is a big time sink but the best thing is that you can share your projects with people and publish it out to the whole community.
See this email from Scrapblog.com:

Journal Your Memories
If you don’t record the stories behind your photos, your memories may someday be lost. Digital cameras make it easy and fun to take hundreds of photos everyday. The events that make up your life and all of those photos have a story.

If you want some inspiration, check out these scrapblogs and share in the memories that inspired the photos.

Animoto
What Animoto does can be summed up with a description from their website:

Animoto is a web application that produces MTV-style videos using the images and music you choose. Produced in a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. Best of all, no two videos are ever the same. Ever.

We will be writing more about it with some videos soon.

First day of Spring is here. There is a myth about standing the egg on the first day of Spring (which is Vernal Equinox). I came across a video piece from a TV news channel that hosts a guy, Phil Plait, from badastronomy.com which dispels this myth. The video is about 6 minutes long!

Fun stuff aside. Lets look at some sites that we came across recently:

DiyCollage.com
I have just come across a website which started writing about Photo Collages and all the possibilities and options that people have with their pictures. The website, DiyCollage.com, only talks about photo collages but there is a good chance that they can go to other photo related articles and reviews. We think it is a great service and promotes business like ours in the long term.

Photojojo.com
Photojojo.com is a great site for anyone that takes pictures. Their archives are filled with a lot of interesting and cool stuff. And, do not forget to visit their store for some interesting gifts - we particularly like magnetic photo rope (1 for $12) and

mailable (yes mailable) photo frames. You have to check them out.

Picnik.com
This service, if you have not already come across it, you have to try it.

The best thing that one can do to pictures on the web. A mix of Picasa, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp and more combined into one on the web. And, it is free!

We would like to wish all our customers, our site visitors and affiliates a happy, prosperous and healthy new year 2008.

2008 is going to be quite an interesting one with events like the Olympics, presidential elections, and more. Lot of technology changes are happening these days including HDTV, GPS, iPhone, and more and more digital pictures and we hope to provide lot more services to our customers to do more with their pictures.

We will soon be launching new products and services in anticipation of growing business. In the next couple of weeks we will write about these new offerings and will provide a preview to the upcoming services and would like to get your feedback.

Again, Happy New Year to all.

Best wishes
Collagist Team

In the spirit of “do more with your pictures” we would like to promote our business during this holiday season and get ourselves busy.

Photo collage is a great way to present various related or unrelated pictures on one big poster. When these collage posters are framed and hung on the wall they bring great character to the room. Now (as of Nov 2007), when you enter the search term “Photo Collage” in google you will get about 4.2 million records. And, if you enter “Custom Photo Colalge” in google you will get about 1.8 million records. So designing custom photo collages is itself is not going to be a great differentiator in this business.

The challenges for us are two fold:

1. To let the customers, like you, know that the photo collage is a great new way to enjoy your pictures
   and
2. Our service, Collagist, is the one to choose for quality, service, and delivery of your photo collages.

We will try to do our best to convince our customers and we are planning on doing one at a time.

Look at Collagist Samples to get ideas for your pictures.

Also, look at a photo collage that we created for Back To Babson weekend in September.

We are planning on adding at least one sample or the projects that we are working on for display on this blog. Please come back and visit this blog.

SM
Collagist

Yes. That is true. We want you to “Do more with your pictures“. In this age of digital photographs, Picasa, iLife, smart phones it is great to be taking more and more pictures and do a lot of fun stuff with them.

Our mission is to help you, the photos loving person, to create Photo Collages, Posters, Canvas, Photo Mosaics, Photo Books, and more.

Please visit our website http://www.collagist.com for more information. In the next few weeks we will be adding more information to this blog and will share the beautiful projects that you can do with your pictures.

The Collagist Team
Shrewsbury, MA