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You probably may not have noticed as these were very short and far between, but if you were affected then sincere apologies! We think we’ve fixed the problem and it shouldn’t happen again. Geek talk follows.
We goofed up a bit, here’s how - When we recently had to reinstall our OS on the production server, we somehow managed to switch our Debian apt-get repositories from etch to sid (the unstable version). And guess what.. we unknowingly installed a bunch of unstable libraries, ImageMagick included. And we suspect that the latest ImageMagick (from the unstable branch) has been crashing when trying to apply an unsharp mask to very large images. We use JMagick to connect to ImageMagick, which we realize may not be the brightest of ideas, because if ImageMagick seg-faults, it takes down the JVM with it :(. Have reverted to the stable versions now.. so hopefully things will be normal. I think we’ll have to start work on an alternate solution to get rid of JMagick.
July 5th, 2008
Whenever a new service or product launches - especially a consumer product, there is a span of time the creators have to spend explaining to people just exactly what they do, before they can start selling it to them.
We guys still get blank stares when we mention online photo printing, personalised calendars or custom mugs. I would love to get to a stage where there is instant recognition when one mentions these.
So how is this instant recognition achieved? One great contributor to that is competition. Your competition, to start with just ensures there are more people explaining the same thing often in different ways, and then someone with more marketing moolah will take such awareness mainstream.
Which is why I want to thank Canon. I recently came across this billboard for Canon’s latest home printer called the Wonder Box. And hear hear! They aren’t selling great page throughput, <super high number> print resolution or some other arcane jing bang. They are selling one important use - that you can use the wonder box to make personalised calendars, greeting cards, photobooks and t-shirts!
Of course, you can already make all these cool personalised products at itasveer (some in the works).
(Click to enlarge)
Which also brings us to another question: Home Printers. Do you think home printers have a got a chance in this niche personalisation market? Would you rather use a home printer instead of an online service? Let us know in the comments.
June 20th, 2008
Hi everyone.. we’re really sorry for being out for so long (close to 30 hrs). It was completely unexpected and happened because of a mistake.. don’t even ask how! But we always have backups so all data was intact. And we haven’t seen the orders coming in for so many hours because of that, so pour them in, and we’ll take a peaceful sleep for a while :)
June 18th, 2008
On 15th April, itasveer will be two years old - it has been a long and eventful journey and we will share some things with you on that day, but in the meantime - we are going to celebrate with abandon!
That means you will get fantastic prices across our product range. For starters, you can buy 4″x6″ prints at Rs. 2.90 only - That’s probably the lowest price for this size across the country.
For those who like the bigger picture, there are 5″x7″ prints at Rs. 6.90 only and upto Rs. 200 off on poster sized prints (12″x18″ to 20″x30″) - that means you can buy a huge 20″x30″ print for Rs. 399 only!
For those salivating for our cool personalised products - they can pick up Calendars for Rs. 399, Mugs for Rs. 249 and get upto Rs. 150 off on Photo Collages! The detailed price list is here.
All these prices will be applied automatically - you do not need to enter any discount codes.
So shop away - bring your photos home or send them to your dear ones, as prints or personalised products!
April 3rd, 2008
It’s that mushy time of the year again - Valentine’s day!
We guys won’t say much about our disappointing love lives, but that notwithstanding, we have some great stuff lined up on itasveer.com for all you love birds out there.
Come to think of it, what better way to express your love than a personalised gift? The various moods of a person on a mug, or the best times together on a photo calendar, or perhaps just a huge collage with lots and lots of photos.
For example, this a mug which one of our customers had designed with the Doodlepad.
We also have a special Valentine Gift Hamper this time. You can turn any personalised product order into a hamper and we will ship it with a nice little bag of some beautiful heart shaped handmade chocolates (about 120 g).
So, get started and send your special someone a personalised gift !
Also, enjoy our special discounts! Free Shipping on all orders above Rs. 100; Classic mugs, Two-tone mugs, Large mugs, at Rs. 50 discount and Calendars at 20% off!
February 5th, 2008
We will be off to our homes for Diwali, so you might find us a little sluggish in replying to your queries till Monday (12th Nov). Ashish who happens to live closest to our office, will be the last man standing for running all our operations (for these three days of course). So we apologise in advance for the slower service you might experience, and we wish everyone a cracker of a Deepawali. Looking forward to seeing your Diwali shots on itasveer soon :)
November 7th, 2007
We were making a pretty much regulation (bug fixes) release today, and we kept running into problems. So sorry about the frequent “itasveer is out on a coffee break” page. All batch uploads also got turned off during that time!! Also, users might have experienced a 20 minute outage yesterday night, we moved our DNS servers to new ones, and it seems we were impatient in updating that in our system, which translated into unwanted outage :(. Our sincere apologies for the trouble.
BTW the new release has some speed optimizations, so itasveer should feel zippier. Doodlepad has cut down on its already feather light weight (it has gone down from 225kb to 200kb) and is better than ever. So you’all.. keep the feedback coming :)
Update: We’re still facing some issues it seems, we’re trying hard to get things back to speed.
Update (late in the night now) : We’re finally looking good. Spent our whole day figuring out what was wrong with our Mysql server. Turns out it was a DNS resolution problem and had been lurking there for quite some time!
September 4th, 2007
Clockwise from top left: Nishant, Ankit, Animesh, Ashish
Half freaks - half geeks !
April 16th, 2007
Alas, The Indian team has been thwarted in the World Cup - rather embarrassingly at that - and our “revolutionary, web 2.0 campaign” :) around the world cup seems to have come a cropper.
For those who don’t know - or didnt get the chance to know IndiaJeetega is a world record attempt to make the largest fanmail photomosaic ever - fans send the Indian team an online postcard and we put all those together into a very large photomosaic. The mosaic might have looked like this.
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==> |
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| An early version of the mosaic |
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With lots of fan postcards |
But after yesterday’s match - it looks like our plans, as of many others, have been dashed.
So while we string our hopes on the unlikely possibility that Bangladesh loses to Bermuda (!) I can’t help being reminded of something someone told us the other day - “We picked the wrong team”.
Apna to mamu ban gaya! :(
March 24th, 2007
Yes, it has arrived. The new, rocking and reloaded itasveer. We have added cool new products and some great new features. Let me walk you through some of the stuff and you can tell us what you think.
The itasveer product line has expanded and you can now create customised T-Shirts, Mugs and Greeting Cards with your photos and images.
You say what’s so special about that, considering so many others offer the same? Well, that’s because we have put a lot of thinking into helping you design these products like no other. The big new feature, which we are quite in love with, even if we say so ourselves, is the Doodlepad. What is the Doodlepad? Doodlepad is an online tool specially crafted for designing products. It is drag-and-drop simple yet packed with features.
What can you design with the Doodlepad? Anything you wish. Some examples will be in order, so here we go.
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Want to make a collage of photos? Sure - Add multiple photos, resize and rotate them and move them around. |
| A comic page effect? Sure - Add a photo, and add a speech bubble with changeable fonts and colors. |
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A brand new design? Sure - You have ready-to-use art like Backgrounds, Border and Clipart. Mix them up, add some text and you have a unique new design. |
See some actual product samples here.
What else is new at itasveer? Many of you had asked for photo albums. We admit we have been a little late with this, but only because we wanted them to be special. Which is why we bring to you beautiful
Handmade Photo Albums created by children from the
NGO Parichay - an organisation which is doing several activities towards the personal and the social development of children, youth, and adults of the community.
Buy them here.
Wait. There is more !One of our users asked us once:
“How would one know what the final image looks like ? e.g. if the original image is 5 by 8 and one wants 4 by 6 size, how does one know how the image is clipped to the appropriate size ?” Well now you can. We have introduced
Cropping Controls to help you specify what part to clip and what part to keep, or not clip any at all.
Click here to learn about cropping.
We will post details/demos of these features individually soon.
Hey, and don’t forget - you guys better keep sending us any issues that you might face and your thoughts/suggestions.
February 13th, 2007
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