It's Earth Day

I often think about how much paper is wasted with the printing of all those greeting cards that just sit on store selves. One of the reason's I started Cardvio was to only print and mail what you needed. We also have made a big push to make sure all our cards are printed on recycled paper. In any case, if you feel like you should reach out to someone and tell them about Earth Day, feel free to send card: http://bit.ly/XUe8l

Thoughts from TED 2008

How long has it been. I have not either taken the time or have been way to lazy to write down my thoughts. This passed week I attend the TED Conference for the first time in Monterey, CA. It was an amazing journey that has inspired, touched and connected me with so many amazing people. It was an opportunity to hear 20 minute talks from some of the most profound and inspiring people in the world. I was truly moved by the experience and realized how important it is to grow as an individual and contribute to our community. I am not sure what or where these amazing experiences will take me but I hope to bring some of my inspiration and joy I felt over the last week to the people around me.

I also hope to write more, I am finding how important it is to write and express how I see the world as an opportunity to connect with people. I hope these pages can do just that.

Carm

Print 2.0 and catching up on my posts

You ever get so involved in something you don't even take the time to look up from your computer to enjoy the view. It's been a great couple months for us. I feel many ways we're going to keep pushing the limits with Cardvio. Here is a great article I found today on HP Print 2.0 Strategy, we met some of the team from Tabblo and we thought there technology was interesting and it's great to see someone get acquired in the space (even though it wasn't us).

There has been a ton of stuff going through my head as of late. Everything from Google Open Social to Print 2.0 to Gmail with IMAP support. Lastly, I saw this great video on Techcrunch about how information has changed since it's all become digital. Below is the list I created from the video of what we do with information on the internet.

Create
Organize
Search
Critique
Distribute
Understand

If you start thinking about these terms and where they are in their Internet timeline, you start to see that some are very mature and others have a long way to go. You can also start asking yourself what is the next word in the list, if you can figure out that you've probably got the next billion dollar idea.

I think we still have a long way to go with Understanding and Distributing information. A lot of people talk about the Semantic web will finally bring meaning to the internet but I think it's going to be very hard to make that work, Google is still doing a better job than anyone else. More importantly, we're still kind of locked down in terms of distribution, we still are confined to browsers and many of our devices still lack the ability to really see information in a meaningful way.

Anyway, I don't want to get to far off track with Printing 2.0 because I think at Cardvio we are really part of it. We are all about socializing the idea of cards and make them into a web 2.0 object with all the qualities that come with that. Printing might also be following the same process we've seen with the server/client model. In other words, printing is moving away from the desktop and moving back to the server. My hope is that this is the case and Cardvio gets to be part of it.

Cardvio for Salesforce

As Promised, today's the day. I am in San Franscisco at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference and we are announcing our new Cardvio for Salesforce application. The application allows any salesforce user to send cards to clients, prospects, or entire companies. You can go to link above and take the app for a test drive to see how it works. We're very excited about it and we're getting a lot of press from Adobe and the reception here at Dreamforce has been great. Also, thanks to our development partners Theikos for helping with the salesforce integration.

Labor Day Weekend

Well, here we are at the beginning of another school year. We have the privilege here in Boston to have more colleges and universities than anywhere else in the world so when September comes, so do all the students. While it does drop the median age in Boston to 33 on labor day weekend there is a massive influx of students and moving vans everywhere. However, it's 10:30 at night on a Saturday and I am sitting here at a little cafe near Tufts University and really enjoying the people and atmosphere.

On another note, very soon we will be launching our first major partnership and plugin with the largest CRM provider in the world. Look for more details in the next few weeks.

Have a great labor day

Carm

Old World Printing

Since I started Cardvio I have had to learn a lot about printing, the terminology and different types of machinery. I watched this video on youtube about a guy in Somerville, MA who runs and old school printing press where they actually set each letter and then tediously print out each page like it's a work of art. I was amazed at the patience and the level of detail that goes into each print. It's this type of care and attention I hope to put into Cardvio. While the message is important, it's also the look and the feel of piece of mail as it arrives and the texture of the paper and the depth of the colors that truly makes a great card. I could only wish to be as passionate as this guy is about printing.

Article on VC Community in Boston

Of course with the summer months comes a lot of running around and spending a lot of time outside and not much time blogging. So, after a friend of mine tipped me off to this article in the Boston Globe and how bad the VC market here is in consumer products compared to the West Coast, I thought I would do some writing. I find it strange the VC's seem more comfortable flying out to the west coast and making deals instead of looking to the local community here in Boston for great start-up. It's strange how well the article reflects many of our experiences we've had with investors. I think it really comes down to looking at the level of risk and how conservative east coast VC's are compared to the the the west coast. I often see rather interesting consumer concepts with no real idea of how they are going to make money get quite a bit of funding on the west coast with not nearly that level of risk here on the west coast. Who is more right? I am really not sure, my only hope is that investors continue to see a market of opportunity and invest in smart people great ideas. Link to Article