Review: Moo.com
11:42 pm January 24th, 2007 by Sal Cangeloso
When I first heard of Moo.com, I was immediately interested. It took me a second to realize exactly what they were doing- the name does not really help- but once I figured it out I was sold on the idea. Moo combines two things I really like, namely business cards and Flickr, into an extremely slick mashup.
Basically, what Moo does is give its users a way to print what they call “MiniCards” straight from your online photos at Flickr.com or Bebo.com (no Zooomr yet). This is not your standard photo printer, like Snapfish, because the photos go on one side, while six lines of customizable text and a logo go on the other. The service integrates extremely smoothly with Flickr (my online photo gallery of choice) so that all you have to do is log on to Moo, enter your Flickr information, and pick the photos you want to be printed. Moo works extremely well with the Flickr API so that your Flickr images open up right in Moo and are still properly labeled and organized.
Before when I mentioned business cards, that was not entirely accurate. Business cards are a standard size (3.5″ x 2″) but Moo’s MiniCards are actually smaller. At 2.75″ x 1.125″ MiniCards are much smaller than business cards (about 56% smaller), something which may or may not be a good thing. While their size makes them unique and stops them from being confused with real business cards, they will not fit well into standardized organizers (rolodexs, etc.) and probably cannot be used as a replacement for a business card (unless your job involves doing something creative).
The size is probably not an issue with most users, because when used in cooperation with digital services, like Flickr and Skype, the card is used simple to transfer otherwise digital information. In the Skype case a screen name could be passed along with a card and the recipient would be able to get in touch with you then. It’s a great way to promote people reaching you in new manners as opposed to a phone call to the land line you recently had disconnected.
So basically you go to Moo, log in, and choose the images you want to appear on the cards. If you want five images, you will get 20 of each, and if you want 50 images, it’s two of each (and so on). You can manually choose up to 100 different images from your photo account or have them chosen at random and then you can pick the ones you prefer.
Once you settle on the images using a cool drag/drop application, you have to customize what each picture will look like. The crop tool is very simplistic and the only functions it has are moving the cropped area, rotating the cropped area 90 degrees, or to zoom in. Once this is done it is time to do the backs.
The back of the cards are essentially the same each time. You get six lines to work with as well as the choice of an icon (you can use one of the 10 stock images, your Flickr buddy icon, or blank), and if you want the Flickr logo in place for not. The text can be in one of three fonts and in one of nine colors. In each line you can add text or you can add in a variable that will change from card to card. This can be the image’s title, date taken, the shutter speed, focal length, or a few other things like that, but nothing too interesting. When it’s all done, it’s 100 cards for $24.99 shipped. The shipping takes about 5 days to get to the USA (east coast) and arrived via USPS.
The cards arrived in a plastic box (nice touch) with a piece paper around it that held it shut. Also there was the receipt and a MiniCard from Moo that has identifier information on one side (probably so they ship you the right cards). The other side can be seen at the top of this article.
The print quality is quite good. It is not quite photo quality and some texture/patterning can be seen if you really examine it, but overall I was happy with the print. The card stock is on the thick side, something that you would find from a nice print shop (with what I believe to be a aqueous semi-gloss coating) that has a satin finish.
Overall I am quite happy with how the cards turned out. The turn around time is not especially fast and the cards are not that cheap, but if you are looking for something cool and casual to give to a new friend so they know your email and phone number, this is a great way. This is especially true for people who don’t want to give out their business cards all the time but still want to have something to be remembered by.
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