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Spread the blurtt love to your friends on facebook! |
Hey blurtters, we have built an awesome way for you to share your blurtts with all your friends on facebook!
As soon as you sign in with facebook on blurtt, our system will ask you for your permission to post blurtt postcards you send on your facebook wall!
So everytime you send a blurtt postcards, you'll see a post on your facebook wall (and so will all your friends!) that looks something like the image below.
Happy blurtting!
Nikhil Sethi
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The Lack of Emotion on the Web |
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It seems to be that as the Internet expands into new horizons and creates new forms of communication, each increased level dumbs down the amount of emotion we are able to pass on. The three major problems people try to solve in building communication tools are speed of delivery, overall connectedness, and emotion.
Speed of Delivery
From the pony express, to the current global postal networks, the constant battle has been against delivery speed. The faster we could deliver the same message the more advanced we deemed that form of communication to be. Now with what we can refer to as super communication tools, text messages, email, and twitter, the problem of time to delivery has effectively been nullified. The speed of delivery is inherently connected with the amount of emotion in a given message as emotion is time sensitive. The problem arises in repetitive actions, as we are migrating to completely digital lifestyles, it becomes difficult to express emotion within the guidelines of the digital realm.
Emoticons have become the digital representations of our feelings.
Overall Connectedness
Connectedness refers to the reach a particular message might have. Developing for maximum reach means building tools and services that can intermingle social networks with blogs, and create a unified tool allowing a message creator to spread their communication across all channels.
Connectedness helps and hurts emotion. It helps by allowing people to use a variety of distribution channels to create messages, it hurts by limiting the boundaries in which messages can grow. No more can a tear drop or a smear of ink be used to portray an emotion on a piece of paper.
Emotion
We are an emotion filled species, perhaps overly so, why does our technological evolution strip away this bare necessity? We have become so accustomed to the ease of the internet that this ease is killing our ability to see the emotion layer hidden beneath. This is why we invented blurtt.com.
To utilize the glories of the internet while producing a form of communication that incorporated speed (1 business day), overall connectedness (no more need to know mailing addresses, sending from facebook/twitter), and pure emotion (the joy people get from receiving a tangible, feelable card in the mail is immeasurable).
Next time you want to send someone a personal note, send them a blurtt. Inject some emotion into your daily communication and watch your relationships flourish.
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Tweet REAL postcards to your friends, international blurtts, and a brand spanking new API. |
Hey everyone, we have a ton going on and I thought id share with you a few new things going on here at blurtt. I’ll keep this short, and to the point.
Tweet real postcards to your followers!
We have integrated blurtt into twitter in two ways. First you can now send blurtts to your twitter friends by going to blurtt.com and when you’re choosing your recipient there will be an option to search and send to your twitter fans.
Secondly, you can also send blurtts through twitter itself! Simply follow @blurtt, and tweet in this format.
@your_buddy = Whoever you want to receive your mailed postcard
There are two extra options. The first * controls the font color. The second * controls the background color of your postcard.
Heres a screencast to show you the exact process.
Remember if you need help ask @blurtt or email
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
International Blurtts + Paypal
Simply put, you can now send blurtts to your friends overseas! Simply input their address, or use facebook/twitter and we’ll mail your postcard anywhere in the world for $1.50 including postage!
You can now also checkout with paypal or amazon.
API – Turn your website’s images into postcards and gain some $$$
We have an over abundance of joy for sending and receiving real postcards here on blurtt.com we thought we would share some of that awesomeness with everyone!
Now you can add postcard sending functionality to your website or blog by placing a small piece of code blurtt.com/api on your site!
What this code does is lets you choose an element id that you have associated images for and blurtt will overlay a stamp when user’s mouseover those images allowing them to send your images as real postcards!
What this does is allows you to monetize your content better, as for every blurtt sent from your site puts money in your pocket. How much exactly? 5% of sales from blurtts through your website.
So not only can you provide instant postcard functionality to your user’s, you can monetize your images, all by placing our extremely small piece of code on your website!
Below is what user’s will see when they mouseover your images.
Examples – Check out my blog nsethi.tumblr.com for an example of a live site running blurtt’s api.
To get started go to www.blurtt.com/api.
Happy blurtting!
Nikhil R. Sethi
Co-founder blurtt.com
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After a bit of a hiatus...
I am back, dears! It’s nearing the end of summer, and I feel like sitting out in the grass ‘til the sun goes down every night, just because this warm twilight is so fleeting. I’ve been thinking that I’m going to try something new with this blog of inspiration. Each week, I shall be posting items that I find on a particular theme.
You can look forward to reading about my particular associations with that particular theme every single Monday, and then check back on the daily to see pretty pictures and baubles that I snap up from my endless online browsing.
This week’s theme: sunrises
Mmm… I love how peaceful sunrises look. I have to admit, I’ve never been the sort of person who has the self-discipline necessary to wake up in time to catch a sunrise. Even when I’m in gorgeous locales far away from home, I can’t seem to drag myself out of bed and open the window.
Nonetheless, I like how sunrises have the ability to capture the soft beginning of something new. There’s nothing obnoxious or garish about a sunrise… it just comes into being, quietly, without announcing itself.
So good day, everyone. Let’s start something new.
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Hi everyone,
Today I wanted to talk about manmade residences and how they can take on a life of their own sometimes. I think we've all been in houses where we feel a very strong presence there -- that can either be a creepy crawly "oh goodness, there's a ghost!" feeling or just the sense that the house has a personality of its own.
My favorite phrase of the week has to be "feral houses." Check out James D. Griffioen's website for his photos of just that -- houses that have been completely overtaken by plants. There's something so lovely and raw about these photos. It's like nature taking back what is rightfully hers. They give me the shivers!
At my house, all the floorboards creak and the lights turn on and off without warning. I find this comforting, somehow, even though it terrified me when we first moved in. My parents would leave and come back to find me sitting on a table, holding a butcher knife to ward away the evil spirits that I was sure lived there. How about you? Do you have any stories about a house with personality? I'd love to hear it!
Yours Truly,
Teresa
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New Community Manager Says Hi! |
Hi friends!
Welcome to Blurtt – a community for letter-sending enthusiasts like myself. My name is Teresa, I’m the Community Manager and I am a diehard fan of snail mail. I love receiving it, I love sending it, I love picking out pretty postcards at gas stations or in art museum gift shops – the postal service is such a magical institution to me! However, in this day and age, we’re all so busy and constantly glued to our computer screens that it’s hard to find the time to find envelopes, hand-write letters, find postage, etc.
Enter Blurtt – as fast and convenient as email while still retaining the joy of receiving tangible notes in your mailbox. I hope you come to find this website a wonderful way to keep in touch with all your friends and loved ones.
And now onto the random stuff –
I’m going to start posting different links/images/videos on here for you to check out. Sometimes there will be contests and opportunities; sometimes it might just be a picture of a cute puppy. I also want to start doing profiles/interviews of the artists we have on here – so contact me if you would like to be profiled!
Today, I just have a little round-up of articles and random knick-knacks that I find inspiring or just plain fascinating. Enjoy your little weekday dosage of inspiration!
Help Remedies is the cutest, cleverest little pharmaceutical company out there. They sell pills and band-aids in these beautifully-designed packages that are simply labeled with the ailments. The acetaminophen comes in packages of “help! I have a headache” and the band-aids come in “help! I’ve cut myself.” How brilliant is that?
My favorite part of their website though, is the “help! I’m bored” page where they take it upon themselves to solve all of life’s other ailments. Love someone who doesn’t love you back? Drunk? Don’t know what to do for your birthday? Click here and Help Remedies will solve your problems – or at least put a smile on your face :)
http://www.helpineedhelp.com/bored/
The following NY Times article is bleak, but fascinating. “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man” – doesn’t this sound like the precursor to some frightening sci-fi movie or something? Read on about predator drones, machines that can recharge themselves, and other advances that will keep you up at night, hiding from your Roomba.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html?_r=2
And from the fashion world – beautiful girls on bikes. How could you not find this visually inspiring?
http://www.garancedore.fr/en/2009/07/27/me-my-bike/
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Well that’s it for today. Comment/contact me if you have any thoughts or interesting links that you want to share. I’ll see you tomorrow!
Yours Truly,
Teresa Pham
Blurtt Community Manager
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So its been a crazy few weeks getting everything up and running. We just removed the beta wrapper so anyone can sign up and use blurtt now (although we are still in beta). And im happy to say that we are gaining some momentum, and have a lot of cool things to share.
First and foremost we are doing an Exchange a tweet for a blurtt promotion. All you have to do to get a free postcard, is send a tweet from your twitter profile with the following message:
Tweet "Forget virtual gifts, send REAL cards through www.blurtt.com!" For a free postcard! Get em while they're hot #blurtt
After you tweet that make sure you are following @blurtt (www.twitter.com/blurtt) and we'll send you a direct message with a coupon code for your free blurtt. How easy is that.
Now onto the fun new stuff. We just released blurtt groups, which we hope will start to change the experience and effectiveness of sending real cards. Fundamentally groups in blurtt allow you to send a REAL card to any major organization, celebrity, politician, charity and many more, in an extremely seemless manner. You don't need to know any addresses, and everything you send can be displayed in an organized fashion in each corresponding blurtt group page. Some neat applications that can prove to be really important come when people are trying to create social change, or getting some message across during a protest or anything of that nature, where lots of people can send REAL mail through blurtt and not only have a very real physical impact, but also be able to replicate the effect online.
So we hope you enjoy this new feature, and we will (you can too) keep adding more and more groups!
Nikhil Sethi
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