Seeing as so many of you enjoyed last week’s Friday Freebie, i’m going to try to make them a weekly event! This week’s prizes come from Crafty Staci’s Etsy store. Don’t you think they’d make the most amazing Christmas gifts? She also takes custom orders and has about 160 different fabrics to choose from!  I have 2 sets to give away. A “Nikon” set for SD cards and a “Canon” set for CF cards (or for SD cards if you store them in those little plastic boxes). Just write either “Nikon” or “Canon” in the comment box to take part in the draw. I’ll announce the winners here and on Facebook on Monday the 7th November (entries close at midnight, PST on 11/06/2011).

"Canon" set

"Nikon" set

This is one of my favourite sites! I’m a huge fan of their weekly photo challenges, the quality of the entries is impressive… actually it’s intimidating, i’m too shy to upload any of my own photos but one day I hope to be good enough or brave enough to join in the fun!

There’s still time to vote in this week’s competition. Click here to vote and if you have time to spare, go through previous week’s challenges and gather inspiration for your own photography projects!

Long in the making but worth the wait! We’re busy putting the finishing touches to the new SmileBooks software. Not only do we have a new 8×6 Compact SmileBook but we’ll also be introducing SmileBooks Greeting Cards and SmileBooks Calendars!

You take great photos. Now is your moment to share them with the world.

You are invited to participate in the One Life Photography Project, building a yearly international record of photography to be immortalized online and in a bound archive submitted to the Library of Congress. The top participating photographer, as decided by our esteemed judging panel, will be awarded a $25,000 award and a feature in PDN Magazine.

I found this interesting article in the latest Vanity Fair magazine: 47% of us would opt to take our photo albums with us into the afterlife if we had the chance!

Last Thursday I attended the BlogHer Business 2010 conference in New York and it was amazing. I spent the whole day taking notes and trying to asbsorb as much information as possible.

How do you get to Manhattan from our office in Farmingdale? You take the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station. And, if you have a “thing” about being late, you take the 5:26 am train. Notice how the humidity fogged up the lens of my camera!

Farmingdale station

The BlogHer conference was held at the Hilton hotel and of course I was the first to arrive.

Hilton hotel where the BlogHer conference was held

Which gave me plenty of time to explore!

First in line!

Once the conference started, I was so busy trying absorb information, I didn’t have time for more photos.  BlogHer Business 2010 was the best conference i’ve ever attended! Awesome speakers and the BlogHer staff couldn’t have been more gracious!

It’s here at last! We’ve spent the last 2 months or so creating a new look for the SmileBooks web site!

The new SmileBooks home page

The navigation has now moved from the left side to the top of the page. We’ve gotten rid of that hard to read “Impact” font and hopefully we’ve simplified the whole experience for users. It will now be much easier to find information and inspiration for your photo book projects!

If you haven’t seen it yet, then take a look for yourself: http://www.smilebooks.com/photo-book.php and let me know what you think!

I’m going to be attending the BlogHer conference in New York next week! I’m hoping to learn a lot and am looking forward to putting all my new-found knowledge to work to make this blog Bigger ‘n Better.

EverydayCelebrating tweet

Michelle from Everyday Celebrating, who we’ve worked with so often in the past, will also be there and we’re going to come up with another special offer for her readers.

We’re also hoping to launch the revamped SmileBooks.com web site tomorrow. We’ve put a lot of thought into how to make the web site easier to navigate and also to put our message across more clearly. We really do believe we have the best photo books on the market, so it’s about time we had the best web site too!

I thought you might enjoy seeing some old photos today. These were taken at the CES in Las Vegas in 2008. Microsoft invited us to present the Vista version of our software on their booth. 

Here’s Dominic installing the software the day before the show started:

Dominic getting the booth ready for the show

And here he is enjoying one of our extravagant lunch breaks:

Lunch break

The following photo was taken at the end of a long, hard day:

Dr. Reiner Fageth (CTO), Tracy and Dominic

The SmileBooks brand was launched shortly after this trip and we haven’t looked back since!