Archive for December, 2007

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Viruses, Spyware and Trojan Horses, oh my!

December 27, 2007

Lucky me… My PC has a nasty virus. And I don’t mean a bad bout of the common cold. I managed to infect it with a trojan horse. Basically, that means I have spent HOURS with anti-virus/anti-spyware software trying to clean it back up.

Since it is nearly the end of the year and a good time to do general housekeeping and whatnot, consider this your friendly reminder to NOT download something that seems a little questionable and ALWAYS keep your anti-virus software up to date. And, most importantly, BACK EVERYTHING UP.

That said, since I haven’t been able to use RocketLife for a week now (am having withdrawals, thankyouverymuch), I’d love to open the blog up for your submissions. Send me your creations and you can be the blog star of the day!

If you’re looking for a little inspiration, here are a few ideas to get you started:

  1. It’s time to bust out the 2008 calendars! Make one for your family and friends with RocketLife! Aren’t pictures of your family better than, say, pictures of dogs and cats or tropical scenery?  Unless, of course, they’re pictures of your own cats and dogs and vacations to tropical locales…
  2. Use some of your holiday pictures to create your own custom thank you cards. Writing a thank you card NEVER goes out of style and gets even more stylish when you make one using your own photos.
  3. Make a photo book of all of your favorite holiday moments. You can start a new tradition - a new holiday book for every year!
  4. Make collage prints using your holiday photos. They’re quick, easy, inexpensive and great for tucking into those thank you cards.

So start creating! Send your screenshots here!.

Posted in Holidays | No Comments »

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Change Your Theme at the Click of a Button

December 20, 2007

One of the fastest and easiest ways to add some pizazz to your creations is to change up the theme or what we like to call a theme variation, which is, uh, a varion of a theme.  And if you can see all of the variations to a theme by clicking a button, that’s a good thing, right?

Let’s say a theme catches your eye and you want to make a series of cards or mugs or photo book pages or calendar pages, but you don’t want them to all look the same… Or maybe you’re not totally crazy about the theme but you like the overall idea of the winter theme, for example.

Just click that lil’ theme variation button and change things up!

Theme Variations

Here are some examples of how your theme can change:

Theme 1

theme 2

Theme 3

So go for it!  Give the theme variations a try!

Posted in Cool Stuff, Themes | 1 Comment »

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Mac Attack…

December 13, 2007

I am the first one to tell you how much I love my Mac. I’m on my fourth one and it’s like… my baby. My entire life is on that cute lil’ white machine (I have an iBook - pre-Intel, but upgraded to Leopard, thankyouverymuch) - photos, music, my writing, my CSS editor…

So when I first started here at RocketLife, I was BUMMED that this cool new product wasn’t going to work on my baby.

And I (gulp) crossed over to the dark side. I bought a PC. Shameful, I know. I did, however, put one of those cute white Apple stickers on it for solidarity.

The funny part is that THE ONLY thing I do on my new PC is use RocketLife, so you can probably imagine just how badly I am anticipating RocketLife becoming Mac-friendly.

I can’t confirm any specific timeline, but RocketLife should be Mac compatible some time in 2008. We’ll have a party over here - trust me.

In the meantime, I certainly don’t expect that you’ll buy a PC like I did. But you can always borrow a friend’s or use the PC at the office (not that I’m condoning spending your work hours playing around with RocketLife… ok, maybe I am) or convince your boyfriend/husband/son/neighbor kid to stop playing that World of Warcraft game for, like, five minutes so you can make a photo book, pretty please with a sugar on top!

Posted in Heart to Hearts | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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A Scrapbooker Shout-Out

December 13, 2007

Kim Guymon over at ScrapBizness gave RocketLife a huge shout out today. Kim’s a serious scrapbooker and her blog is really at the heart of the industry and the craft.

I have to admit that I find it really interesting that so many scrapbookers (of the die-cut and special glue and fancy markers and stickers genre) are really digging RocketLife photo books. I think it comes as such a surprise to me because I thought a scrapbooker really enjoyed the careful, time-intensive part of their creations (much in the way that I prefer to knit my own scarves - wipe that surprised look off your face! - versus buying them at the store). It’s the handmade factor - the love and care that goes into a project that makes it that much more special to you.

But Kim makes a really good point - there’s so much customization (and love and care!) that CAN go into making a photo book with RocketLife. Here’s what she had to say about some her favorite RocketLife features that let her really get creative with her project as a scrapbooking girl in a digital world:

Smart Arrangement technology (their Secret Weapon) - their program snatches the photos from your computer file and auto fills the book. The cool thing is that it pretty much knows which photos to group together. The result is a really fast book! You could literally order it in 5 minutes. You don’t have to upload them all to their site first and then drag them over to your project.

BUT! Being a scrapper, I need to rearrange things and add journaling. But, even that is easy. You can just click a button and it will change the layout on a page several times rearranging the photos each time. Then, add some journaling and a drag and drop coordinating graphic and away you go!

You can change up the backgrounds within a theme by clicking the button that lets you use other options in the theme. You can go deeper into it and change the color of each background. Basically, you can do as much or as little as you would like to do to each page.

You can order the same book in different sizes without having to re-size the pages by hand. Shoot, you can snatch a page and order it on a mug or puzzle without doing anything but ordering it. So, you create ONCE and can order a variety of products. Cool!

What do you guys think?  Are you a scrapbooker who thinks making a photo book is just as fun?  Or do you still prefer the traditional way, but like making other photo projects on the side?

And, if you’d like to share some of your creations with us here at the RocketLife Blog, please don’t hesitate to send them - just click here to email me some screen shots!

Posted in Cool Stuff, Photo Books | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

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RocketLife Gets Mentioned on PhotographyBlog.com

December 7, 2007

You can check it out right here!

Posted in RocketLife News | 2 Comments »

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Holiday Gift Coundown - Calendars!

December 3, 2007

It’s TOTALLY that time of year when people are shopping around for calendars. Why? Because we need to know what day it is next year too… Duh.

I’ll confess - I made my mom a photo calendar last year (with one of those other sites) and it was a little…. dull. But this year we’re gonna do it RocketLife style and make something that’s finer quality, more attractive, and downright fun.

Today we’re gonna go over a calendar made QUICK. In my next post, well, we’re going to do it again, but spend a bit more time and go over different ways that you can customize your work.

But first, let’s do it the super-fast, super-easy way:

Launch RocketLife and select Start a New Project. Then select a set of photos from your directory. I’m going to choose the “Family” folder in My Pictures since this calendar is for my mom again.

From the Product Catalog, choose Monthly Calendars and click the green button - Customize and Order.

Calendar

And… well, you’re almost done! Your photos have been arranged for you to fill the calendar. Pretty cool right? If you want to keep customizing (we’ll do that next), you can. If you’re ready to order, just click the Order button and you’re good to go.

Order

How’s that for speedy?!

Posted in Calendars | 1 Comment »

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Forgive me…

December 3, 2007

I’m sorry, guys.  I’ve been totally under the weather for the past week.  Finally back to my old self and ready to get started with the holiday countdown.

First project will be up today!

Posted in Heart to Hearts | No Comments »