holiday cards

Want to jazz up your Christmas cards this year and be a little greener in the process? Animoto has a cool product for you.

They’ve got three variations of dynamic, animated holiday video greetings that can be easily shared online via email or website. In minutes, Animoto lets anyone create personalized videos – just upload your favorite photos and video clips, add personalized text, pick a song to match the mood, and Animoto takes care of the rest.

It’s not only a paperless, Earth-friendly way to send your holiday well wishes out, it’s also budget friendly – 30-second videos are free, full-length videos cost just $3, and an annual subscription is only $30; high-resolution downloads are just $5 and DVDs cost $20.

The above video took me about 10 minutes or so to make, which included importing photos from a SmugMug gallery (a very cool feature that’s integrated within Animoto).

You can see the other holiday themed videos on this page at Animoto.

The full press release below contains additional details. [Read more…]

Red River Paper has published a video that gives an overview of their paper selection and printing capabilities for holiday cards. It’s a bit on the commercial pitch side of the coin; however, those of you interested in printing your own holiday cards might get something out of it.

Red River Paper keeps telling me how great their products are; however, I generally get all of my printing needs covered through MyPhotopipe, Mpix, SmugMug (via Bay Photo) or locally at Thompson Photo (all of which do a bang up job). For those self-printing types out there, Red River Paper does have the endorsement of Derrick Story over at The Digital Story, who is a pretty trustworthy source.

If any of you have thoughts on your own use of Red River Paper, feel free to drop a comment below.

Finally, you can find the holiday card resource mentioned in the video – here at Red River Paper.