Inside the Box: Part III
April 16, 2008posted 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!
Women in the Blogosphere
April 14, 2008posted by Susan Wright, a Smilebox co-founding team member, Smilebox director of strategic planning and Managing Director of marketing consulting firm Compass Partners
Hello Smileboxers! For those of you who are bloggers or interested in becoming one, I’ve just returned from a fantastic conference in New York sponsored by BlogHer: BlogHer Business ’08. BlogHer is a network of 1,500 blogs by women. In partnership with BlogHer, Compass Partners conducted a sweeping social media benchmark study of more than 6,000 women. We surveyed two groups; 1,250 female Internet users via a nationally representative panel and 5,000 visitors to BlogHer’s network. The results were intriguing. I was struck by how dedicated these women are to their blogs, with more than half of the women surveyed still maintaining the original blog they started. About ¾ of the women surveyed update their blog at least weekly or more often. A few stats:
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36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week (15.1 publishing, 21.1 reading and posting comments). Blogging has become mainstream.
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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?
Smileboxes of the Week
April 7, 2008
Share the Festivities with Easter Digital Scrapbooks and Easter Photo Greetings!
March 21, 2008
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.
