Burst.it - review & giveaway

I recently had the chance to check out Burst. What is Burst you ask? Well, according to their FAQ: "Life's Moments - Smartly Shared. Burst is the simple and private way to capture, save and share life's important moments with family and close friends. Burst provides a safe and organized place to access your videos/photos from any internet enabled device. It is easy and mobile- never miss or lose another moment again."

I started exploring Burst, by completing a sign up for a free account on their web page. Then, I downloaded the app to my phone - it's available for both the Droid and the iPhone. Once the app was downloaded, I was able to immediately start capturing pictures and video. I took a few test shots just to check it out and play with the features. Once you take pictures or videos, they are available on your My Moments tab. When you click on the picture, you can choose to view it, which brings it up full screen. You can also select details. The details section allows you to give your image a title and to tag the picture. It has the information on when the pictures was captured, the location and whether it has been shared. It also allows you to delete the moment.

Have something on your calendar? When you go to take a picture, it will ask you if you are at that event. Leave it as yes, and that will be captured in the title for you.

Now, it was time to share.

Using the contact list on my phone, I was able to easily create groups with which I might share different pictures. For each person, you can edit their set up and send it to them by phone (sends a text message) or e-mail, or both. I loved that I didn't have to look anything up, as long as my friends and family are in my phone's contact list I could simply click to add.

Viewing and sharing pictures is simple. When I first started, I was opening the app and taking the pictures/video, but then I noticed this little button at the top of the My Moments page that said Import. This button allows me to select pictures from my camera roll to share with family and friends. Importing was very simple and took almost no time. I will tell you that the captured date for an imported picture is the time when it was imported, not when it was taken.

Once you have pictures that you want to share, simply click on the picture and select share from the menu. Want to share several pictures? There is a button at the top of the screen that when you click it allows you to share several pictures or videos at the same time. You can then select the groups or the individuals you wish to receive the picture or video. When you send, you have the option of adding a message to the picture.

Once you have shared the pictures and videos, your recipients will receive a text message and/or an e-mail with a link that allows them to view the pictures. When they view the pictures, they have the option to leave a comment. You can see them when you click on the picture and select details and then choose the comment tab. Depending on whether you have sent it as an Open or a Closed Burst controls whether others get to see who the picture went to and any comments left by others.

Can't remember if you shared a picture? No problem, as you look in at the pictures in My Moments, there will be a portion of the Burst logo on the bottom right corner of the picture/video. Not sure who you shared it with? Click on the picture and when you look at the details, the second tab tells you who you shared it with - both groups and individuals.

Want to see your pictures online? No problem, the pictures that you take and the pictures that you import are all available online, once synced. You can choose to sync immediately, or to wait until you have a wifi connection.

Want to share your pictures on social media? No problem, from your computer, when you hover over the pictures in your My Moments page, you can select share. From here, you can choose one of the contacts you set up, as well as to share it on Facebook. You will have to log in to Facebook and allow Burst.it to publish to your wall.

My thoughts. Overall, I think this is a great little tool. I like that the pictures are available on my phone and my computer, with no transfer required on my part.

When I talked to my husband about the app and what it could do, he simply said to me Facebook. But, I told him this was different. On Facebook, the pictures are shared with all of your Friends (based on your settings), with this application you can share them with just one person or with a small group of people - allowing for more privacy. In addition, there are people that we know that don't have Facebook or don't use it very often. This allows us to quickly share the pictures with them, too. Since much of our family is not local, this is a great way to let the family 'peek' in on what we are up to.

I like that it allows me to share the pictures/videos through text or through e-mail. There are several people in my life that don't have text messaging on their phone.

I wish there were an easier way to extract the pictures from Burst.It to my computer. So far, the only thing that I have found is to view the picture and then Save As. When I look at the picture properties side by side, the resolution is the same but the size is different. I uploaded one of each version here for comparison, I saved the following image from my phone and from the computer and imported them here as the same size.
From Phone:

From Burst:

I haven't tried to print them to see if there is a difference then.

I like that I can share the pictures with anyone. They don't have to have a smart phone or belong to Burst.It to receive and view the pictures. Of course, they can set up an account if they want to, but it is not required.

I don't like that my imported pictures don't retain their original time stamp. I am sure that is an improvement that can be made.

When you are online, you can only send phone messages to the contacts that you have set up while in the app on your phone. If you haven't set someone up on your phone yet, you can list e-mails to share to. One thing I discovered here is that if you add an e-mail, associated with a contact that you set up on your phone for text message, it will send it to both the e-mail and the phone. On a positive note, if you add an e-mail from your computer, it does become part of your contact list on the app on the phone - you will have to edit it to put a name with it but the e-mail becomes part of your contact list.

Giveaway!
Courtesy of Burst.It through MomSelect, I have the opportunity to give away to one reader a free lifetime storage plan, valued at approximately $60 per year.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway will remain open through August 9th. Giveaway is open to residents of the US only. One winner will be selected through Rafflecopter. The winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. As a participant in this MomSelect program, I received information about the program, as well as a free lifetime storage plan for my use. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Tracking the Milestones

One thing that I can tell you is that when your kids are little, time flies by. It seems like just yesterday that I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my son, only when I look at him, I realize that it was actually 8 years ago that I was pregnant.

When my son was first born, I had a friend that delivered a meal to me through a women's club I was in. She shared with me an idea that I have been using ever since. She shared that each month she had taken a picture of her children with the same stuffed animal. This allowed her to observe how little they were and to visually measure their growth.

I had a stuffed bear that he had received as a gift and I selected that to be the "birthday" bear. Each month of his first year, then every three months of his second year, and every year on his birthday since then, we take a picture of him with his "birthday" bear. (Did the same thing for my daughter when she came along!) When I assembled the scrapbook for his first year, I put all twelve pictures on one page. It was a great way to look back and see how he changed over that first year.

In addition, when I was a new mom, I quickly learned that everyone wanted to givhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife me free or cheap pictures (and why not, if you find a customer that will come back every year for pictures, you can make a lot of money in the long run). So, each month, I took him to a different studio and got a free 8x10 of him. (Again, did the same thing for my daughter.) Sometimes, I would buy a couple of wallets or other pictures to share with family and friends, but most of the time I was able to exercise constraint and only get the free pictures. As with the birthday bear pictures, after doing it monthly the first year, I pared it back the following years to every six months taking them for a photo session. I typically get more pictures to share when we go for their birthday pictures than for the mid-year pictures, but I always get my 8x10. As a result, I have a nice 8x10 album that tracks their growth.

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.

Holiday Cards

It's that time of the year, time to figure out what to do for Holiday Cards. When we were first married, we used to go the route of a box of cards. I generally would pick them up on December 26th and tuck them away with our Christmas decorations. It made it easy the following year, we would simply write out our cards when we decorated the house. The boxed cards worked for us, after all it was just my husband and I - what more did we need? Then a few years into our marriage, we started to add a newsletter. I think we did our first couple newsletters before we had children, just to update our family and friends with what had happened in the past year. Our cat was even included in the updates. Then, when we had kids, we decided that photo cards were the way to go. This way, the family and friends that we sent cards to could see the little ones at their best. We still include a newsletter, but now it's more about the kids. Just a few years back, my husband decided that we could take the our newsletter digital. He set it up as a second page on our website and we simply printed little business cards with the URL for our newsletter. It was sort of nice (I like paper newsletters) that with the digital version we weren't constrained by our paper in terms of the length of the newsletter - plus, we could include more pictures in the digital version (since we weren't printing them). My husband has told me more than once that he would prefer to take our Holiday Cards digital, but I'm not willing to go that route yet. I like having a physical card at Christmas, especially a photo card. I know that I love to receive cards, pictures and newsletters in the mail and suspect that others do as well. I enjoy going through the stack of pictures and newsletters that my mom gets, when we are at her house around the holidays. I feel like going digital entirely, takes away from the experience.

This year, I received the opportunity to give CardStore.com a try for my Holiday Cards. When I sat down to start my card, I was overwhelmed by the choices. There are so many ways to shop their site - you can shop by color, style, number of pictures and more. They have Photo Christmas Cards, Christmas Greeting Cards, Christmas Postcards, Business Christmas Cards and more to choose from.

I finally settled into the Shop Christmas Cards by Type approach. I knew that I wanted a flat 5x7 card. There were so many cute choices, that I couldn't decide on just one. So, as any reasonable person would do, I opened up new tabs for all of my favorites. After narrowing it to my top 10 or 15, I uploaded two pictures, one horizontal and one vertical to use on the various cards I was considering. It was super easy to upload the pictures, and once I added them, they were available on all of my tabs! I started playing with personalizing the card, adding my pictures to the cards and seeing what I liked. This allowed me to narrow my choice - for some, the colors weren't right for the picture I had and for others, the position of the text or artwork didn't work for the picture I had. Adding the picture to the card and adjusting the zoom and position of the picture was very easy to do. Some of the cards had preset text, but on many you could change the greeting and of course, personalize the signature line. There was freedom to adjust the font style, the size of the font and the color of the font. There were limitations of course on the size, as it needed to fit in the space available for the message.

I finally settled on this card with a picture of my two kids in their Christmas pajamas in front of the tree:

(image from CardStore.com, not an image of my actual card)

I liked that it had a second small photo on the back - we added a picture of the whole family to the back.

As I was checking out, I was given the option to add a return address to the envelopes (which I did! one less thing I have to do). There were other options, like adding the addresses of the recipients and stamps to the envelope and then, sending them all to you to mail or sending them directly to your recipients. I didn't select this option, but it appears that the only added cost is the cost of postage, but if you are pressed for time, this might be a great option to explore.

I expect to receive my cards later this week and will let you know what I think.

CardStore has kindly offered to extend to my readers a discount of 20% off their first order at CardStore.com - use the following coupon code: CSHOLIDAY20. (*for first purchase only.) This offer is good through December 31st. Shipping lead time, is listed as 2 business until they are sent to you, could be a little longer during peak periods, so there is still plenty of time to order your photo cards for this holiday - or maybe you could use them for thank you cards after the holidays.

No compensation was received for this post. CardStore.com provided me with a credit so that I could experience their site and products and share my experience. All opinions expressed are my own.

SeeHere Pages in Stages Scrapbook

I am really excited about the possibility of digital scrapbooking. I wrote a post a while back asking for input on different online options for scrapbooking. After that post, I started to do a little more exploring. One of the things that was a concern for me with online scrapbooking, where I would print one book for a given period or event, was having to wait until all the pictures were laid out and the pages complete to have a book. Another thing that worried me, was how to include ticket stubs, programs, postcards, pictures that I didn't have digitally and other miscellaneous souvenirs that I could include in my paper books.

So, you can imagine that my curiosity was piqued when I learned that SeeHere.com is now offering a post bound scrapbook option, called Pages In Stages. You start with a post bound scrapbook and a set number of pages. You can then add your own pages at home or you can go back on the site and create additional pages to add to your book over time. This option could resolve both of my concerns with online scrapbooking.

We used SeeHere.com for our Christmas cards this year and I have to say that overall we were pleased with the functionality of the site, the ease of manipulating the card, the quick customer service and the quality of the product that we received.

If you are loading single pictures, they have a simple upload process. If you want to load a group of pictures, it is best if you download their upload tool - it just is much quicker and easier than doing each one individually.

You can select your page layouts (0 - 6 or 9 pictures/page are options) or use an auto layout feature where it automatically lays out the pictures in your album. Once the pages are set up, you can edit and manipulate the pictures on them - resize, move, and rotate them. I do like that you can use a layout and leave picture(s) blank - this allows you to really customize the page to the layout and pictures that you want.

I really like the text editing tool that they use. The text is in a large box, making it easy to read what you are typing and easily proofread what you have typed. You can easily adjust the color, the font style and the size.

They offer a number of backgrounds - both single colors and designs. They offer a number of frames/effects for your pictures - one that makes it look like your picture was cut out in a puzzle shape - very cute. You can also add decorations (think stickers) to your pages to further accent them.

I decided to do a book for a mini-vacation that we took. I haven't yet finished my book (I've been busy remember?)

Would you like to try it out? Right now, they are offering 50% off photobooks and free shipping. This offer runs through Tuesday and is their Mother's Day deal.

Giveaway!

Courtesy of SeeHere.com, I have the opportunity to giveaway a coupon code for one 8x8 SeeHere.com Pages-in-Stages Scrapbook to one lucky reader (does not include shipping, you will have to pay shipping, the coupon code is only good until 4/30/10).

How to Enter:

Mandatory entry:
What theme will you use for your 8x8 Pages In Stages Scrapbook and who will it be for?

Bonus entries:
- Follow me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway. Leave a comment with a link to your tweet.
- Blog about this giveaway. Leave a comment with a link to your post.
- Share about this giveaway on Facebook. Leave a comment letting me know you shared.


This giveaway will close on Tuesday, April 20th at 6 pm. One winner will be selected using a random number generator. The winner will have 24 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. In addition to the coupon code for the giveaway, I was provided with one coupon code for a free 8x8 Pages In Stages photobook for myself to try the service and share my experience.

Free Offer from Photoworks

Today, be one of the first 20,000 to request a free gift at AmericanGreetings.com and you can choose to get a $25 gift certificate, a free clutch photo book, holiday cards or photo calendar. Simply click on the "advertisement" on the right side of the page that says "Today Only! Free Gift from Photoworks"

The code is a one use unique code and is valid through December 31st.

CVS Photo - 50 free prints

Right now, CVS Photo is offering 20 free prints for new registrations and 30 free prints when you add your ExtraCare card.

You can have the pictures sent to you or pick them up at the store to save shipping.

Tried It Tuesday - Portrait Innovations

I love pictures of my family. When my son was born almost 6 years ago, we were inundated with offers for free and inexpensive pictures. I took advantage of all the offers and tried out all of the local studios. It was great. I have an 8x10 from every month of his first year. After the first year, I toned it back a bit, going only every three months and then every six months. Now that he is in school, we go about once a year and get the school pictures.

I'm sure that many of the studios don't like me, I exercised amazing willpower...even though I would have loved to have bought them all, I usually stuck with the one or two sheets (one of which was generally free) or the cheap package. After all, aside from a few milestones, I was there only to get my 8x10. When it was time to get pictures for the family, I would sit down with my list of poses and figure out which coupon at which studio was the best.

None of the studios completely fit the bill for me. One studio offered a great package at a great price, but you had to make a second trip back to pick up the pictures. Many printed them on site (in an hour or less), but the price per sheet was crazy and unless you spent over $50, you had few options.

About a year ago, we found a great studio that was new to the area. Portrait Innovations.

They are a child-focused studio. The camera is not attached to a pole. The photographer is free to move around, allowing them to move closer to the child or find the right angle for the not always cooperative child. They have a number of employees on staff and there always seems to be an extra person that comes in to help pull the child's attention towards the camera and put a smile on their face.

The photographers are patient. I have never felt like my studio visit was rushed. They take the time to make sure they are going to get pictures I am going to love. With each pose, they seem to take three pictures in quick succession, to help improve the opportunity to get just the right expression. (a great help if you have a blinker)

After taking a series of pictures, the photographer will inquire, are there any poses that you wanted that I didn't get. They take a nice mix of close-ups and full body shots. They have a variety of backdrops, but keep it simple. You are welcome to bring a change of clothes for the children and they have a changing room in addition to the bathrooms, to facilitate this process.

The process for reviewing the pictures is great. They bring up the pictures three at a time (a perfect fit for the three quick succession pictures of each pose). You choose your favorite(s) from the group and the ones you like are put in your cart. After working through your pictures (I had 82 when I took my daughter this weekend), they go into their sales pitch. But, I have never felt like it was high pressure - I respect that. They show you different special effects - including montages, sepia, b&w, etc. They are randomly checked afterwards, so even if you indicate no interest, they will still work through building each sample for you.

Then, they tell you how much it would cost to get 3 pictures of each pose you selected as favorites. Of course, I had something like 27 this last time after I narrowed down from 82, the number was ridiculous and I joked with the photographer that the pictures might be "only" $400-something, but the wing I would have to put on my house to display them all would be the problem.

This is where they could use an improvement to their software. Clearly, you need to narrow down to one or a handful of poses that you would like to purchase. Unlike the beginning where the software will automatically put the three pictures up on the screen, the photographer now has to use the effects page to bring up each pose as a bigger picture so you can view them side by side to choose your favorites. They can typically pull up three at a time for you to compare. Then, when you want to "eliminate" some of the choices, they have to go back to the other screen to remove them from your selection. There is a lot of back and forth. The company could improve the software to make this a quicker, smoother process.

As you work through this narrowing down process, the photographer will periodically provide you with an updated cost to get the poses that you have left. Over a certain number of poses threshold, they offer a free cd with your pictures. The files on the disk are in their proprietary software and can only be used for reprints at the studio. They do provide a small thumbnail type file, but we tried to use one for the wallpaper on our computer and it was fuzzy. This is however the only way to keep a file copy of your pictures for future printing. Unlike some studios, they do not store the electronic file for any period. So, if you think you might someday want reprints, this is your time to decide.

Portrait Innovations does offer a $9.95 promotional package. The offer is limited to once per promotional period, but there seem to be at least 4 or 6 per year. For us, the periods generally work, although we do need to go in advance of my daughter's birthday if we want to go there at Christmas, as they are in the same promo period, but a week before her birthday is a different promo period.

For pictures beyond the package, you can purchase single sheets or in sets of three, which gives a discount. I think that a set of three sheets of one pose is about $25 - not the most economical, but a great way to get some additional sheets of your favorite pose or an alternate pose. I generally wind up doing the three sheet deal with a picture of the kids together and the package of the birthday child.

After you finalize your pose selections and sheet sizes, it takes about 15 minutes for your pictures to print in their in studio lab.

They do accept walk-ins, but recommend appointments. I have not had a problem, other than around the holidays, calling to get a same or next day appointment for the kids, even on the weekends.

I have had a really positive experience with Portrait Innovations. The only challenge was when we bought the cd and no one told us that the files weren't great for sharing on-line with our out of town family, despite the fact that we had sat there and said that it would be nice to have to show the pictures to the family. But, when we called the studio with our concern, they promptly offered to let us return the extra photos we purchased to get to the level needed to get the free cd for a refund or to give us a courtesy credit toward a future visit. This was great customer service, they didn't hesitate to try to correct the problem that we had.

Great customer service, child-friendly studios, friendly and patient photographers and great pictures will keep me coming back.

You can go here to find a studio near you.

Have you tried Portrait Innovations? Have you tried another product or service? Share your experience in the comments or on your blog and leave a link.