Posts Tagged ‘Free Ecards’

Three Love Songs from Storytellers of our Time

February 12th, 2010

The Valentines that you will remember years from now will have nothing to do with the gifts you bought or received. You will remember who you were with, and the time you shared together.

Most couples will tell you that their best times came when they had little or nothing. They may remember a love letter they wrote, but probably cannot recall the flowers, jewelry and any other physical gifts.  The love letter maybe a lost art in a world of texting, but truth be told, most of us look to our musical hero’s for inspiration – for it is the one art that can really transport us back in time. Today’s hero’s are more likely to be played on YouTube than heard on the radio – so we put together a Valentines Mashup Card with a few Love songs that we feel have well stood the test of time.

First up, Bruce Springsteen’s powerful  “If I Should Fall Behind” is not so much a classic declaration of love, as it is a song  that speaks to our sense of caring for our true-love, in spite of our own human frailties.

“We said we’d walk together, baby come what may,

and in the twilight, should we lose our way,

If as we’re walking, a hand should slip free,

I’ll wait for you, If I should fall behind, wait for me.”

http://www.mashuparts.com/ecard/87285285/Three-Love-Songs-for-You

Second, and humor me here, but the poet “Leonard Cohen” was on to something with his “Chelsea Hotel” and this 1988 live reference to Janis Joplin. In this clip he uses the variation “younger men.”

“She said she preferred handsome men, but for me she would make an exception.”

Finally, a little John Hiatt with “Have a Little Faith in Me” from his breakthrough album “Bring The Family.”

“When the road gets dark, And you can no longer see, Just let my love throw a spark, And have a little faith in me.”

We wish you all a Happy Valentines, and wish you luck in finding your very own someone to love.

Mashup Arts Launches a New Video And Photo Greetings Service Just in Time for the Holidays

December 1st, 2009

Bringing Social Networking to the Greeting Card Market
Mashup Arts, announced the launch of its Holiday and Christmas ecard service designed for video and photo lovers of all ages. The new online service helps people create their own custom cards with multimedia tools. The opposite of mass market cards, these greetings can be highly personalized by embracing the diversity of the visual Internet.

The idea is to start with photos and designs from the community, and then mix in free Internet content from sites like YouTube and Flickr. People can also add their own pictures, music or videos so their greetings really feel “home-made.”

embedded by Embedded Video

“With so much creativity being shared on the Internet, we feel there is huge market for a new class of greetings where talented people share their ideas, and anyone can mix in their favorite content,” said Shaun MacDonald, CEO of Mashup Arts. “The key is to help people get started, and for that, we have built a model with templates, simple design tools, community sharing and artist attribution. If we can catch the wave for sharing and remixing content with shared workspaces, we will create a new segment in this market.”

The social community stands in contrast to the classic studio model, where you shop for cards and sign them. This new model allows people to be creative with simple on-demand search and design tools, so they can mash up titles, photos, videos and music to match their personal style.

Users can import their photos directly from Facebook. Cards that are made public can be browsed for ideas, and reused in whole or in part as people create something new from something old. The ability to mix in multiple videos and photo slide shows is unique in the market, and this is of particular value for people interested in creating team, school, group or family cards.

Free to use, the ecard service will make money through premium value added modules for printing, DVD’s and storage, as well as enterprise services for companies to bolster their brand promotions.

The technology platform is a thin web based application with a flash interface for rendering videos, images, music and text. The workspace environment was developed in PHP and AJAX, with numerous technology API mashups like YouTube for videos, Flickr with a Creative Commons API for photos, CCMixter with a Creative Commons API for music, and Picnik for photo editing. The greetings are assembled on the fly from their discrete elements. This is to enable remixing so images and videos can be shared within the community, and it reduces storage by avoiding content duplication.

About Mashup Arts

Mashup Arts is the “Mashup Card Company.” Our website was built for social networkers who want to share video ecards and photo ecards by mixing their personal content with free Internet content. We encourage individual and community creativity. The application offers options to customize ecards so they better reflect your style or brand. You can also create group ecards for your office, team or school. We help people to play with photos, videos, text and music to create unique and memorable cards. The flexibility and search options are suited for our diverse cultures. Check out what our community members have made for your Birthday Cards, Weddings, Christmas and the Holiday Season, Valentines, Chinese New Year, Diwali, or your favorite charity event.

To view the video’s associated with this press release, please visit the links below:

embedded by Embedded Video

A Video Ecard that Howls at the Harvest Moon

October 3rd, 2009

The Thanksgiving harvest spirit is universal, and we are kicking off the season with the Moon Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival this weekend. It is celebrated by Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese on October 3rd which is a date that parallels the autumn and spring equinoxes, when the moon is stuffed full and beaming round. Tom Waits would say it “poked a hole in the night sky.”
The Canadian Thanksgiving is around the corner, October 12th while the American Thanksgiving is November 26th. Both are marked by Football rivalries and family turkey dinners. I am looking forward to the traditional Detroit and Green Bay match up.

The celebrations have long marked the end of the harvest season. In some countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, it is also referred to as the Lantern Festival, and the people decorate and display a broad range of lanterns, including my favorite, sky lanterns.

While it is a time for families to come together, it is also a time to reach out to family and friends. There maybe someone you had been planning to call for some time. Here is a good excuse to wish them well, and perhaps look up at the same moon from miles and miles away. If you wish to send along something special, the free video and social ecards at MashupArts.com are a clever way to craft a family card or a social card for all your Facebook friends and family. You can send them individually, or you can invite others to collaborate and add in their own pictures and video to the mix, creating a Google Wave like expression.

50,000 Beer Drinking Canadians say Cheers to a Dead Man on Facebook

September 29th, 2009

Canadian beer drinkers are responding to the TV campaign to join in the celebration of Alexander Keith’s birthday by going to Facebook and signing one of his free ecards. As of this morning, the Keith’s facebook page had picked up over 50,000 fans, with over 12,000 signatures on 3,000 birthday cards. It is one of the most successful marketing campaigns of the year, and a great example of a cross media campaign that uses social media to connect with people online.

The marketing teams for Keith’s and its parent firm Labatt’s have hit a home run by engaging beer fans to interact with their brand, and to enable a viral campaign as they share news of the contest with their online friends.

The Alexander Keith’s brand has long been steeped in tradition, and the maritime beer drinking spirit of good times. A few lucky winners of the contest get invited to travel to a big party, and thousands more dream of winning a prize.

Some marketers are looking for even more engaging campaigns where fans not only type in their comments, but also add in their pictures and videos – perhaps even mashing up their personal content with the brand contest content. The recently released Mashup Arts application for videos cards and social cards, or the Animoto application with its pro image effects can backstop these campaigns.

Expect to see many more variations of these cross media campaigns as first movers take advantage of these social media techniques to connect with their customers.