Smilebox your DIY! This week’s featured Smileboxes showcase our customers’ craftiness — from Anneliese’s chicken coop, to Lauren’s redecorating and Pete’s (amazing!) new home. If you’re into DIY, remember you can also check out our cool “Before & After” design (search Before & After in the catalog) to show off your projects to friends and family!

In recognition of everything teachers do for our kids, Smilebox has launched its new Teacher’s Toolbox program offering qualified teachers a free premium account to the Smilebox service (a $39.99 value).  We’ve also debuted a new lineup of designs created specifically for the needs of teachers including digital newsletters, school-themed scrapbooks, fieldtrip photo albums, school mascot/logo customizable slideshows as well as student activities such as multimedia autobiographies and storybooks. 

If you’re a teacher, you can register for the Teacher’s Toolbox program by clicking here.  If you know a teacher, click here to copy an invitation and send them an email.  Remember, Teacher Appreciation Week is this week!  Show your teacher you care by inviting them to join Smilebox for free!  You know Smilebox is a quick and safe way to showcase your photos and videos - now give it to your well-deserving teacher and make their job a little easier!

If you have questions or ideas for our Smilebox Teacher’s Toolbox program send us an email at teachers-toolbox@smilebox.com.  Check out our new classroom-focused designs in our catalog under “School.”  Additional designs will follow each month. 

Hooray!  Hooray!  It’s National Scrapbooking Day!  In recognition of National Scrapbooking day on Saturday May 3rd, Smilebox is giving away a new free premium Spring scrapbook design.  Simply click here (http://www.smilebox.com/templates/15064/index.html) to download our cheerful “Bright and Fun” eight-page scrapbook.

The square-format scrapbook was designed by Smilebox Studio multimedia artist Rachelle Erickson and offers flexible embellishment, color and title customization with lots of room for journaling.  Best of all, the design can be sent via email, posted to a blog or printed without ads.  Just drag and drop your favorite photos into the template, add your own words and music and it is sure to make your friends and family smile!

Spread the word!  It’s a great way for your fellow scrapbookers to try Smilebox for free.  Offer available Thursday, May 1st through Sunday, May 4th.

Happy Earth Day!  Don’t forget that Smilebox is an easy way to do your part to save the environment (and postage!).  Our collection of egreetings give customers a way to lessen their impact on the planet and stay in touch with friends and family with unique multimedia designs personalized with their own photos, videos, words and music!

What do you do to lessen your ecological footprint?

posted by Joanne, Smilebox content manager

The votes are counted and we’re pleased to announce the winners of our “Adventure in the Woods” children’s storybook contest.  We received hundreds of very creative entries.  Thank you to everyone who submitted their personal versions of our Adventure in the Woods story – they were all fantastic.  Without further ado, the winners are:

Sandra – Grand Prize, winner of a Canon digital camera

Leah – Runner Up, winner of an annual subscription to Club Smilebox

Davene — Runner Up, winner of an annual subscription to Club Smilebox

Leslie – Runner Up, winner of an annual subscription to Club Smilebox

Congratulations!

Smilebox is a perfect way to celebrate your great photos.  Our Smileboxes of the week feature some terrific ones.  Sandi and Bill, your shots of Savannah are stunning and Dolly, we love yours of those big (and small!) cats.  And Doris, your photos of Red Hat Ladies just make us smile! 

posted by Paul Ingalls, Smilebox Director of Technology

Howdy.  If you have been following along previous installments of Inside the Box, welcome back.  If this is all new, then I’m glad you stopped by.  My name is Paul, I’m Director of Technology here at Smilebox, and this week I am going to discuss our “Creative and Technical Excellence” value.  As mentioned in previous editions of Inside the Box, we pay a lot of attention to our company values: “Consumer Centric,” “Creative and Technical Excellence,” “Family Oriented,” “Accountable,” “Transparent,” “Collaborative” and “Fun.”  I’ve already discussed our “Consumer Centric” value in Part II, be sure to check it out.  “Creative and Technical Excellence” supports another important section of our culture – a focus on creating a world class service.

We knew when we started Smilebox that we needed to create something different.  We wanted to build a software application that would not only amuse its user, but would amaze those with whom they shared their creations.  Hence our original tagline – “Amuse yourself, Amaze others!”  Our focus on creative and technical excellence helps us reach and maintain this goal.  This value is fundamental to our company, as an excellent service is our bread and butter. 

There are at least two key elements that make an application fun: it must be easy to use; and it needs to just work.  This is where technical excellence comes in.  We have built an agile process around practices that focus on technical excellence.  For example, we work in pairs to ensure that every line of code we write has had two heads thinking about it.  We are responsible for writing automated tests for our own code.  This ensures that the code has been used at least twice.  When we identify a better way to achieve a goal, we are obligated to use the better way through a practice called refactoring.  This is just a sampling, but you can already see how we have leveraged redundancy to improve quality.  Suffice to say that we take our craft seriously.  The goal is to ensure an easy to use product that just works.

Amazing others relies heavily on combining your amazing personal media with amazing designs.  This is where creative excellence comes in.  We work very hard to ensure that the designs we produce are creative and unique.  Through our internal efforts, as well as collaboration with amazing partners like Hallmark, Madison Park Greetings, Scrapgirls, K & Company, Pinkerton Design and Sarah Beise we have a large selection of design concepts to build upon.  We then leverage our technical excellence and interactive design expertise to help take those concepts and bring them to life.  The goal is to ensure that we have the right design to fit your special moment, and that it is something you are proud to share with your friends and family.

We combine technical with creative for a reason.  Our cross-team collaboration is vital to the health of our service.  We have found that some of our most impressive ideas and solutions have come from people outside the team facing a particular challenge.  Therefore, we work hard to combine technical and the creative into one team.

As you can see, a focus on “Creative and Technical Excellence” is key for Smilebox.  To build an application that makes creating a Smilebox a rewarding experience requires deep technical and creative skill.  Instilling a culture of excellence ensures that we keep our eyes on the prize – amusing ourselves and amazing others.

Can you think of ways to improve the Smilebox experience?  Leave me a comment below.  And for those waiting for a Mac version, let’s just say the end is in sight…J  Until next time, happy Smileboxing!

posted by Susan Wright, a Smilebox co-founding team member, Smilebox director of strategic planning and Managing Director  of marketing consulting firm Compass Partners

• 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week (15.1 publishing, 21.1 reading and posting comments).  Blogging has become mainstream.

• Women are so passionate about blogging that large percentages of women said they would give something up to keep the blogs they read and/or write:

- 55% would give up alcohol

- 49% would give up their PDAs

- 42% would give up their i-Pod

- 43% would give up reading the newspaper

BUT, some things are sacred … only 20% would give up chocolate!

And remember, Smilebox is an easy and creative way to personal photos and videos to a blog!  An in-depth powerpoint presentation on the survey is available on the BlogHer site.  Check it out and let me know what you think about women in the blogosphere!  Are you this dedicated to your blog?

A Smilebox can tell a story and evoke a variety of emotions — joy, excitement and even sorrow.  Our Smileboxes of the week from Sara, Natalie and Barbara do just that.

You’re the supreme Easter bunny.  You’ve bought the Easter dresses and suits, dyed the eggs, decorated the house, organized the hunt and managed to document it all with darling photographs of the big day.  Now share your joy (and efforts!) with friends and family in a Smilebox Easter scrapbook or Easter photo greeting.  We have 78 Easter or Spring designs that make it easy to drop your photos into in just minutes.  Just type “Easter” into the catalog search field to choose yours.  Here are a few of our favorites.