Moo Just Grew. Moo Launches New Bigger Business Cards.

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The company that turned mini-cards into a mondo success is now going big. Or at least bigger. The mighty Moo now brings its creative customer-centered cool to regular size business cards. Naturally they’re still echelons above those tired generic cards, with extra cool twists like your choice of two eco-friendly paper stocks, one of which is the chlorine-free, 100% recycled, recyclable and biodegradeable Moo ‘Green.’ Then there’s the ‘magic’ technology they’re dubbing ‘PrintFinity’, which lets you have a different photo, logo or design on every card. As they say “it’s a little portfolio in your pocket, a catalogue, a trading card, anything you like.’

Happily, you can even buy your business cards in runs as short as 50. So you’re never stuck with boxes of cards with the wrong address, forcing you to spend the night before the Big Conference making teeny stickers to cover up the old one. Moo really gets that life today is ever evolving and your cards need to morph right along with you. These eclectic cards are $21.99, with the mini-cards still happily available at $19.99.

As is probably pretty obvious, I have long been a Moo fan. And not just because I am originally from Wisconsin and born to worship Golden Guernseys. Moo is a great example of how fresh perspective and imagination plus Web 2.0 tools can transform a commodity business into a whole new industry. Moo Prints, based in London, was the brainchild of Richard Moross, who got bored with the same-old same-old bland of traditional business cards. Moross also noticed that the Internet and its virtual communities were changing the offline world, creating new kinds of relationships and new forms of interaction. There was all that pent-up user-generated-creativity bubbling all over the web. So rather than introduce the mini Moo cards in the same-old, same-old way, Moo invented a new distribution channel by partnering with social networking and community sites like Flickr and Bebo. Now Facebook, etsy, livejournal, Vox and Fotolog have joined the Moo Crew as well.

Here are some ways I’ve used Moo (feel free to add your own ideas here):

*I invented MOOLIGANS Cards for Kids. Because you can add 10 pictures per Moo order, this makes it inexpensive and fast for Moms, Girl Scout troops, teachers, classmates, etc. to create Moo Cards for the group. I set up class, club, activity, school blogs and print that email address or URL on the back of the MOOLIGANS.

* I get teeny Moo-sized envelopes from Paper Source and I put a couple of (different) Moos in the envelope with one of my Guru of New Moo Stickers on the outside. At a conference or event, my teeny envelopes are much less likely to get lost, discarded or neglected, because they’re more substantial, don’t seem boringly corporate and everyone wants to open them and see what’s inside.

*Okay, I'll admit it. I sometimes use pieces-parts-of-myself (or others) rather than my whole face because it's far more intriguing to just show lips or eyes. Mystery!

*I've used Moos as mini event invitations
*For client PR --promoting blogs, books, art, photography, design portfolio
*As very personal and reasonably priced birthday gifts
*I like to buy art when I travel --- I bring it home and Moo-it so I can always have tiny souvenirs of that streetfair in Avignon with me. And it's a nice gift for your traveling partners.
*I tried (but failed) to turn my stickers into cute magnets. I am dangerous with craft supplies.

Japan Goes Uber-Eco with New Zero Emissions House.

Is GW soaking his feet in a fuel-cell powered foot bath, as Honda’s Asimo humanoid robot serves him green tea?

With the eyes of the world on all things eco at the G8 Summit in northern Japan, this week is the perfect time for Japan’s tech innovators to dazzle us with their most droolworthy green gizmos. And droolworthy they absolutely are, ranging from Sanyo’s Aqua waterless washer to Sharp’s solar-powered TV to Mitsubishi’s human-sensing air conditioner to Honda’s gracious tea-bot. But stealing a bit of their thunder is where the eco-gadgets are displayed — in the new Zero Emissions House.

The 200 million yen, 2152 square foot, one-story house has been built near the Summit and will be moved to another area afterwards, where the general public can gawk at the high-priced, high tech appliances in the Japan-style uber-eco home. The house is powered by a wind-turbine generator and a photovoltaic generation system and sports a rooftop vegetation system plus solar panels.

Zero and low emission houses have been sprouting up around the world, including one in the UK, where the first one went up last June.