Before The Wedding:

• Engagement announcements: Have a photo from the moment he proposed? Send out a postcard announcement it your family and friends!
• Bachelorette/Bachelor party invites: Have an funny picture of the honoree and want to use it as the invite? A hard copy of the invitation beats an evite any day!
• Save the Date: Take a picture of your venue, use an engagement photo or an impromptu picture to send out Save the Date cards. The postcard can hang on the fridge as a perfect reminder of your big day.
• Thank you cards from bridal shower: Send out pictures from the party as a thank you.

At The Wedding:

If you are a Guest:

• Shoot a photo at the reception of the bride and groom on the dance floor as a “thank you” for the invite.
• Shoot photos of the ceremony to send to family or friends who were not able to make it and tell them you wish they were there.

If you are the Bride and Groom:

• Have guests send you their photos from the wedding to help collect all those moments you didn’t get to see (best part you the photos are already printed out for you, it’s like receiving little gifts in the mail!).

After The Wedding:

• Thank you cards: Make your guests jealous by sending out your thank you cards with a picture from your honeymoon (We promise you won’t get any hand cramps from typing!).
• Wedding announcements: Send out a postcard to all who did not attend.

Benefits:

• Quick, easy, unique and inexpensive
• No hand cramps from writing to all your guests!
• Use new or existing photos
• Postage automatically determined
• Send to multiple recipients at once
• Mailed First-class the next business day
• Only $0.99 per postcard mailed in the U.S.

Thought postcards were a thing of the past? Think again. Shoot it! is resurrecting the postcard in a digital era. Aren’t some memories worth more than a MMS text? Don’t you want to hold on to them, hang ‘em in your office or on your refrigerator? Capturing that special moment in time is now as easy. Shoot it! enables you to send a real, personalized photo postcard from anywhere to anyone in the world directly from your smartphone in just days. It’s easy, it’s affordable and it’s fun!

When we started, our vision was to connect people with something more tangible than just an SMS or MMS. We wanted something you could hold in your hands, something you could put up on the refrigerator and look at for weeks to come. With traveling, it’s a natural fit. Our clients think so and so does Forbes. com!

Staying in touch with your family and friends is easy to do when you use the shoot it! app, especially when you’re traveling around the world.  When you’re overseas,  it’s difficult to find a good postcard, calculate postage and find a post office that will send it. Plus, it’s commonplace to arrive home from your vacation before your postcard does.

With the shoot it! app, we simplified it all. All you have to do is take a photo, choose a friend to send it ot, type a message and send it out. Here is the video footage of the Forbes.com roundup of best iPhone travel apps. As you can see, Kym McNicholas is a fan of the application.

As Kym McNicholas points out in the video above, shoot it! costs $0.99 for any postcard mailed to the US. For other countries, here’s our pricing: $1.24 to the UK or Tokyo; $1.49 to the rest of North America, Western Europe and Asia.

What’s cool is how quickly it arrives in the mailbox because of our global print network. If I’m visiting Asia, I can snap a photo and send a postcard to my sister in the US using the shoot it! app. Instead of waiting for International Air Mail, the card will actually print and mail in the US the next business day.

By the way, shoot it! is not only a great travel app for the iPhone, we also have apps for the BlackBerry Android and Windows Mobile phones. Click here to install the app for your phone.

This really one of my more demanding shoots, and I was really fortunate to have a really solid crew to work with on this one. One good thing about having a crew with me means that I get tons of extra photos, I’m way too stressed out when I’m on jobs like this to take photos for fun, so I end up not shooting anything, but what is needed for the job. So photos like the sweet one of me below dressed up as if Han Solo went on safari would be just a fond memory, or a fashion nightmare. I really have to thank my guide/babysitter Elphas, and Micato safaris because without them, I would totally be  lost somewhere in the jungle. I’ll have way more for you all next week,

hugs and kisses

Q~

My friends and I are avid halloween junkies and actually spent the entire month of October doing all sorts of Halloween activities. I suppose this is late for most of you all, but like I said, 12 months of Halloween is almost upon us, and you really don’t wanna be left out, I promise. Here are some images from our holiday exploits, hopefully for my sake my buddies have more treats for me than tricks, although magenta is my color, I dunno if my fragile ego can handle anymore.

hugs and kisses

Q~

Check out www.facebook.com/shootitmobile for more photos.
Keep shootin’ it!

-LOB

H1N1 and the nurse at the Freak Show.

Pretty Polly Dolls at Nightmare on Princess Drive

Optimus Prime at Nightmare on Princess Dr

Cupcakes at Wrigley Mansion

Take that!

We have teamed up with Gear Live to put together an incredible contest guaranteed to bring out the good, the bad and the ugly. What is the prize? Well, its none other than the limited edition Xbox 360 Modern Warfare Console 2!

As Gear Live states,

“If you’re a gamer, you probably know that Microsoft is set to release a limited edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 console. It hits stores on November 10th, and we’ve pre-ordered one that we’re giving away to one of you. In case you’re unfamiliar with the console, here’s what’s in the box:

• Limited edition Xbox 360 Console with exclusive design
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Standard Edition.
• 250GB HD
• 2 black wireless controllers
• 1 black Xbox 360 wired headset
• 1 Ethernet cable
• 1 Standard Xbox 360 Composite A/V cable”

All you have to do is snap a photo of your best PWNED face and send it to Gear Live. As you know, the shoot it! application makes it easy to send your best PWNAGE photos, so get to entering. Get all the information on the contest by clicking here.

Ponzi Pirillo of Gadgetspin caught up with our founder, Tom McDerrmott at a 944 pool party in Phoenix. As you can see at the beginning of the clip, the party was packed with plenty of people taking photos and using shoot it! to send them to their friends and family.

Tom explains to Ponzi the idea behind shoot it!, postcard messaging, laminated cards, and the postcards that get sent to him. Check out the entire interview above.

Andy Rooney went off on the US Postal Service on last week’s 60 Minutes.  The Postal Service has been struggling financially for years, and they are looking at all kinds of cost cutting measures to help dig them out of a massive hole – they are projected to lose billions again this year.  Yes, billions with a “b”.  Consequently, they are considering all kinds of options; from closing 10% of the nations post offices, to reducing mail delivery days from 6 to 5 days a week.  And of course, they always consider raising the price of stamps.

I’m not against any of these ideas, the simple fact is they may need to take drastic measures to stop the massive bleeding, just like any other business.  However, most of us know that this is no way to ensure long-term competitive success.  They simply must develop better products and services than the competition.  And, they they must give people a “reason to send mail” in this ever growing digital world.  They aren’t only competing with UPS, FedEx and email anymore; they are now competing with mobile devices and messaging, Twitter, Facebook and every other social media and messaging service out there!  But, they’re not even trying to compete within their own wheelhouse; they’re recent advertisements are telling people how to ship boxes easier and for less money.

Really?  Is this resonating with anyone?  Do they really think they can beat UPS and FedEx at this point in the package shipping game?  That will take billions and billions to compete.

The fact is; the US Postal Service stopped focusing on the one product and service that only they can deliver; regular mail.  I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of direct mail and how dynamic, real-time, one-to-one direct mail can deliver value in this blog post – I’ll save that argument for another time.  I want to focus on personal mail.

Unfortunately, the current powers that be within the US Postal Service, believe that it’s a waste of time to focus on traditional/personal mail – believing that there will never be enough mail to move the proverbial needle, to help save them.  Consequently, they stopped encouraging the use of it..

While it’s probably fair to argue that it can’t dig them out of the massive hole they’re in, I would argue that it’s still the one very valuable service that only they can deliver.  And, they should absolutely spend more time helping people understand how real, physical mail can still add value to all of our lives.  They should spend some of their advertising dollars telling people that a letter, greeting card or postcard can still deliver a far better message than an email, text or tweet.

Digital messages (email, texts, tweets, etc.) are fairly impersonal forms of communication.  Don’t get me wrong, these are great messaging tools, and they absolutely have their place in todays communication landscape – And I use them all.  But nothing delivers a personal message better than traditional mail – period.

And, although I haven’t always been a huge fan of Andy Rooney’s, I have to admit that I was absolutely cheering him on when I heard him say that “The best mail is from a friend or relative”.  And, that “it’s sad to say, that very little of what most of us get these days, is that kind of mail.”  And, he goes on to say that “There’s something special about a letter – we all like to get one.  An email on the other hand, has all the charm of a freight train.”

Well said Andy!!

The US Postal Service should hire you as a spokesman, since nobody at the Postal Service seems to be singing this tune!  The fact is; I believe EVERYONE would agree with you – There is absolutely something special about a letter, and we all like to get one!  EVERYONE still enjoys getting something personal in the mail – it makes us feel special!

And, an email, text or tweet simply can’t deliver that kind of message.

So reach out and touch someone today, with a greeting card, letter or postcard.  I guarantee you; it will bring a smile to their face, and yours!

Tom

Anyway, now that that is out of the way, among all the crazy decisions that I make in terms of my love life, one should also consider what I do in for my social life as well. Obviously with my last post I can occasionally do something rather awesome on the job, but what about off the job? I would like to think that the awesomeness ( i don’t believe that that is even a word, but just roll with it) from my job spills into my everyday life. One thing that I find particularly awesome, is pranking my friends. Then to make it worse, I’ll prank them, then I’ll photograph it, and then I’ll shoot it over to them later! So that their pain is truly immortalized and they get to relive it again just a matter of days later. Just like I did to my friend Shaun here, who decided to get a little too drunk. I  wish I could take credit and say that I did all of the lovely art on him, but I can’t. It was actually a lady friend of is, when just the right about on nudging .

Honestly, how do these two blurbs correlate  with one and other??? Honestly they don’t. I really just wanted to impress a lovely damsel by putting what she said to me up her, so she knows I’m actually listening, and I guess to show her funny I can be. Anyway, till next week….

hugs and kisses,

Quang

Check out www.facebook.com/shootitmobile for additional photos!

Playing carnival games at Tempe Oktoberfest 2009

Enjoying a day in the sun with Mom!

Sunbathing at Oktoberfest

Flying high over Oktoberfest!