Review : Www.moo.com

Every now and then you'll encounter a web-site that seems to do exactly the same thing as a thousand others, but after playing around with it for a while, you discover some cool features and see where it distinguishes itself from its competitors. One of these sites is www.moo.com.

At first sight, there's nothing special about the site. They print cards. That's it. Greeting cards, postcards, sticker books, nothing out of the ordinary. But they offer one more kind of card: the mini-card. These cards are smaller than regular business cards and 100% customizable. On the front there's either a design or a text, on the back there's room for 6 lines of text. And this is where the fun really kicks in. You have to order the cards in packs of 100, which seems like a lot, but the company came up with a brilliant move: rather than having 100 cards with the same design, you can choose up to 100 designs, and the batch will be divided accordingly. So if you choose only 1 design, you'll get 100 cards with the same design. If you choose 2, you get 50 of each, you choose 4, you get 25 of each, and so on. And yes, you can choose 100 different designs and get one of each.

It didn't take long for people to see the value in this and a whole community gathered behind the idea of turning these cards into an art form. Besides using your own art or pictures, you can also choose from a set of designers who've been designing especially for the cards or just allowed their work to be used. There's some true gems to be found in there, from abstract art to cartoony type figures to the college humor of bustedtees. If you want to be creative, you can make up your own template and design a personal signature card in Photoshop and use that.

As any good web-site these days, there's the compatibility with popular sites like Facebook and Flickr, which makes it really easy to import pictures.
Once you've created your cards, it take up to 2 weeks to get them delivered. Where the cards are originally meant to be used as business cards, people came up with original uses for them. Their particular size makes them suitable for a lot of fun uses. You can make collages out of it, use them as flower cards or simply as wall decoration. Check out the Flickr Moo community for some really creative ideas. Some people made their cards so original that they've become highly wanted collectibles and are in great demand for trade. If you want to keep your cards safe, they also sell special Mini Card Holders.

If you're looking for something special to lighten up presents, your wall or just want to get some really original cards, this is definitely a site worth looking into.