Important News for the Home Brewer and the Thirsty: Our Disc Labels Find a Valuable New Use

So let's say you've packaged up your project, but you find you have a few extra disc labels left over. Do you hold onto them for future discs? Sure, you could, and that's maybe the most practical thing to do, but your other option is to follow Christopher Roeleveld, of the food blog Food Crypt, and turn those spare pieces into clever bottle covers for home brewed beer. Much more attractive than just a plain bottle or a piece of masking tape thrown on there, while also quicker than designing some sort of fancy stick-on, regulation-size wrap. We can't guarantee the labels will stay on once condensation and/or refrigeration gets involved, but as Christopher has proved, they're sure to stay on long enough for you to snap a quick photo.

A big thanks to Christopher for letting us share his photo and here's to hoping there's lots more creative re-purposing (and purposing, of course) going on in Long Island City, San Diego, Little Falls, San Jose, Coatesville, San Francisco, Broomfield, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Keller, Fall River, Palm Harbor, Austin, Hagerstown, New York, Venice, Keene, Van Nuys, Conroe, and Santa Monica.

Now Available in Belarusian

Every now and again, you get an email that comes completely out of the blue. But when, in this random email, someone asks you, "I would like to translate your homepage into the Belarusian language, which is my mother tongue. Is it ok with you, do you mind?" as Martha Ruszkowski recently did, you of course answer, "Yes, please!" And so Martha, in an effort to practice her translating skills, has done just that, turning the main landing page of this very site into the very attractive, Cyrillic-filed Belarusian. While it's not likely that any of us here will be able to read the translation, it was a great, unexpected treat. And hey, maybe it'll mean a big uptick in business from Eastern Europe! Here's the translated opening paragraph:

"Мы прафесійныя дызайнеры, якія былі незадаволены матэрыялаў для пакавання DVD-дыскаў і нашых кампакт-дыскаў. Мы стварылі Jewelboxing каб дазволіць тварам для атрымання кароткатэрміновай высокага класа пакеты і даць ім волю, каб засяродзіцца на найболей важнай часткай працы, творчы. Мы абралі Super Jewel Box ™ Кароль і Стандартныя выпадкі, створаных дадатковых кампанентаў найвысокай якасці і зрабіў дакладныя шаблоны дызайну для практычна ўсіх асноўных дызайну і праграм публікацыі праграмнага забеспячэння."

A big thanks to Martha for sharing it with us and here's to hoping the cases themselves are being used for interesting projects, in any language, in Raleigh, New Windsor, Los Angeles, Venice, San Diego, Erdenheim, Wakarusa, Woodbury, Fort Wayne, Louisville, Salt Lake City, Blaine, Mankato, St. Louis, Chesterfield, Scappoose, Seattle, Toluca Lake, Eden Prairie, Rogersville, Everett, Brownstown, and Culver City.

Behind the Scenes Look at Shooting a Pixma Spot

A cool behind the scenes look at the filming of a series of spots for Canon's line of Pixma printers. Relevant to Jewelboxing because we chose the Pixma iP4600 to include in our completely-complete Studio kits, after it had been reviewed as the highest rated inkjet for its amazing coverage and fidelity. If you're in the market for a new printer, it comes highly recommended. But of course you can use any brand of printer for great results when printing on one of our kits (we custom mill the paper to make sure of it). Here's the cool making-of:

Jewelboxing Up Close in Sonoma/Napa

If you're a photographer in the inland-northern California area next week, we just ran across news of the Sonoma/Napa Pictage User Group meeting on Monday the 9th. What caught our attention is that the group's leader, the talented photographer Megan Clouse, will be hosting a Show and Tell of the items she uses in her business, "Jewelboxing CD Cases" included. Here's an interview with Megan about the group and its get togethers, and here are the details of the meeting (just make sure to RSVP first):

Monday, August 9th
Jeremiah’s Photo Corner
441 Sebastopol Avenue (@ South A St)
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
4:30pm Mingle
5:00pm Show & Tell
6:00pm Questions and Goodbyes

Happy Birthday, Bubble Wrap!

Amy here at Jewelboxing HQ alerted us to an important anniversary we might have otherwise missed: it's the 50th anniversary of bubble wrap. You can read the whole AP story here about the pair of New York inventors, Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding, who developed this wonderfully protective instrument by accident, while they were trying to create a new type of textured wallpaper.

On a personal note, we don't know where we'd be without the stuff. We go through rolls and rolls of it packaging Jewelboxing and all our other miscellaneous products. It seems like the UPS guy is here dropping more off nearly every week, each roll round and awkwardly shaped making it hard to lug up the stairs, yet surprising light, which sort of makes up for it. We also use a ton of bubble wrap-inspired products, from the Square Spongy Pad Thingamabobs we include in our Studio kits to help separate cases (we're sure these have a real name, but we'd prefer to continue along with this given title) to our now-famous Bags of Air machine, which does just exactly as it sounds and its output helps keep every Jewelboxing order safe in transit when it goes from here to you.

So a big thanks and a happy birthday to bubble wrap and here's to hoping everything is safe and snug in Largs, Los Angeles, Conroe, Rochester Hills, Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, New York, Salt Lake City, Addis, Austin, Sandy, Chappaqua, Toronto, Basingstoke, Lincoln, and Hale.

Cool Tools, Begging Bowls, and 3D Animation

It's a little difficult to follow up from our last post, arguably the best Case Study feature we've done to date, talking to arctic explorer Ben Saunders (it's required reading, so just scroll down a bit to check it out -- then come back up here when you're done). So instead of trying to hit you with another lengthy post, we thought we'd try a few miscellaneous links instead.

First up, it was an honor and a privilege to see that Jewelboxing had been picked up for some nice coverage over at Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, the widely read and respected journal of all things nifty. Writer Elon Schoenholz had a lot of very nice things to say about our humble little cases, like "they go a long way toward making a small business or project appear bigger, undeniably professional."

Next, a couple of very quick links. We randomly stumbled across San Francisco-based singer/songwriter Bill Foreman's album Begging Bowl, which he's been packaging using Jewelboxing Standard cases. Although the image on his site is just a scan of the cover, we imagine it probably looks like the comp we put together over there on the right. We also really dig Bill's ongoing, simple, blocks-of-color layouts between his albums.

And last, we also stumbled across this post on a forum for the 3D animation program Kinemac, wherein a user was asking if anyone could assemble a model of our Standard cases within the program. So far, no follow up to the finished product, but we're guessing it's for something music-related, judging from some of the other links they'd included. We'd be happy to share with them the models we built in After Effects for our first Jewelboxing commercial, but those were something of a complicated jumble (more like 2.5D).

Thanks to all of those who have posted about Jewelboxing here and there, making it fun to stumble across random, interesting projects. Have your own Jewelboxing case you'd like to have us see and possible show off here on the blog? Send it in! In particularly, we'd like to see something from the attractive people in New York, Idaho Springs, Pasadena, Greensboro, Vestal, Venice, Boston, Los Angeles, Conroe, Saint George, Berwick, Langhorne, Bakersfield, Dallas, Brea, Santa Monica, Rancho Dominguez, Blackstone, Portland, and Denver.

High Marks and Good Ranking

Here's something we ran across that was nice to find: Laura Randall's "Top 25 Awesome Products and Services" on her blog, Videography Resources. We were very fortunate to be picked as selection number three, beating out such heavyweights as Costco and the iPhone (even though we're pretty sure the list wasn't really being ranked, we're still going to brag about it). Laura's choices were complete with write-ups about each product or service and her Jewelboxing entry had some very kind things to say about the system (and some well-deserved praise for our man-about-Jewelboxing, Dawson):

"... I honestly LOVE my Jewelboxing cases. I did have to play with the templates a bit when I first got them, but they were more than happy to send me replacement inserts on the ones I ruined. Dawson at Coudal (the parent company) has always provided me with fast, courteous customer service. At the wedding show brides kept picking up the cases saying how nice they were."

Thanks to Laura for talking us up and including us in her collection of goodness. Here's to hoping lots of lists are being compiled right now and we've found our way onto them (the positive ones, preferably) in Phoenix, Boulder, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Chicago, Chino, Lawrenceville, Anchorage, Regina, Culver City, Bethesda, Atlanta, Troy, New York, Mississauga, Chandler, Calgary, Rouen, London, and Venice.

Package Two and Call Us in the Morning

As we ship Jewelboxing all over the world, it's not unusual to find links in our referral logs coming in from sites written in other languages. Despite our years of collective foreign language education experience throughout high school and college, we're all pretty lousy at anything but English (and even that ain't so hot at times). So we'll often fall back on the easy solution by translating these sites using some service like Google or Bablefish. Their translating has gotten better over the years, for sure, but it still requires some time in trying to figure out exactly what's being talked about. What's more, you often find yourself reading something unintentionally funny, like this post we found on the site Criterion. It's about a new DVD set of motion graphics they'd released called Spain in Motion (which looks terrific). Although they didn't use Jewelboxing to package it in, they wrote that they wished that they had. Here's that bit in translated form:

"Similarly, versions of the videos with a high resolution ultra edition had been the bomb. Perhaps a future blu.ray, who knows...I would have liked a "packaging" more beautiful, as Jewelboxing [in], but that would have urged the product with complete safety."

While we're sure that's not at all what was originally written in Spanish, we're certainly happy to accept that unexpected and previously unheard compliment, that Jewelboxing is a "product with complete safety." And now that we can quote someone as having said it, we can start a new ad campaign with dubious medical claims. Any doctors out there who are willing to lend their name to the statement "Jewelboxing is good for your 'T-Zone'?"

Thanks to Criterion for linking our way and allowing us to misinterpret their words. And here's to hoping that the number under the "days without injury" sign is in the high three digits in San Francisco, Belmont, London, Winnipeg, Portland, Spingfield, St. Louis, Santa Cruz, Oxford, Chicago, Weimar, New York City, Zachary, Edison, Manchester, Seattle, and Woodside.

What Better Place for a Dragon Than In Your Civic?

Although Bryan and Dawson here at Jewelboxing HQ are scooter buffs, our motorized vehicle fandom doesn't go too far beyond that. But that's not to say we don't really appreciate the whole car culture, with weekends spent buffing and polishing, regularly going to shows, and hunting for new items for souping up purposes. Quite the contrary (just replace "car" with "design stuff" and we're pretty much the same group of people). And who couldn't appreciate someone like Taylor Scheinuk, who not only writes about fully decked out Hondas, but was so in love with his own Civic, that he wanted the packaging he holds his music collection in to not diminish the pride he has in his car. And, so, like he said in a recent letter to us: "Enter Jewelboxing." Here's from Taylor:

"I own a 2006 Honda Civic LX 4-dr, which comes with an MP3 disc-reader standard. It's all integrated and such into the dash, therefore I don't want to touch it but I want all my music. Enter Jewelboxing. For a year or so I just had my discs in dingy slimline cases and I labeled them with, gasp, sharpie. I ran across your product online after I started doing direct-print discs with my (old) printer. I ordered a 30 pack of Standards and got to work. I had the color scheme in my head from the beginning (I'm a big fan of earthen, so brown and tan were in, in, in) and a piece of artwork a friend drew for me of the character from my book series. Some hunting around MSN Search Images got me the other bits I needed and I got to work."

"Anyway, in the books, the main character eventually acquires a 2008 JDM Mugen Civic Type-R. That's the vehicle featured all over the case."

"I also did a mix disc as my aunt's Christmas present this year and did a case too. I don't have it with me right now but its excellent. Actually, I think that it may be better than my 'Dragons in a Civic' discs."

"BTW: The reason why it's 'dragons' plural is b/c I'm drawing my own cover art with all the characters in it, its just taking a while."

Here's to hoping the rides are just as sweet in Butler, Providence, New York, Phoenix, Chicago, San Francisco, Pasadena, Highland Park, Washington DC, Huntersville, Boston, Atlanta, Norwich, Fallbrook, Paris, Minneapolis, Calgary, Madison, Savannah, New Rochelle, Columbus and Brooklyn.

Drawing the Lines

Dawson, here at the studio, always has his eye out for groups putting together something particularly interesting. The other day, he passed an e-mail reading, "Hey, check these guys out." Check them out we did. They're the Vilppu Store, selling educational DVDs made by famous artist and go-to animation expert, Glenn Vilppu. They've just recently started using Jewelboxing King cases to package their collections of multiple training discs and we got the whole story from Samantha Vilppu who runs the shop (along with being Glenn's daugher-in-law):

"Glenn is world renowned for teaching artists, especially animators and CG artists, how to draw. His main areas of emphasis are in life drawing, the human figure and animals. In the 1970's, he went to work at Disney as an artist. While there he quickly moved into a position of teaching the animators there how to draw. This evolved into him setting the standard for the animation industry to this day. He's a teacher's teacher, meaning that many people now teaching drawing or animation originally learned from him. His books are used as textbooks in many art schools across the country, and are on the list of "must haves" by the animation studios. Many of the art school libraries have his entire collection of DVDs. In fact, many artists are collectors of every educational product he has ever produced! Which brings us to why we started using Jewelboxing."

"The regular cases that his individual DVDs had been packaged in were not ideal for the library shelves, either in the schools or in the private libraries of artists, where they like to show off their collection of all the DVDs in our bulk sets . Since we took over the store, we have been steadily improving the Vilppu image and branding and decided that we would upgrade to Jewelboxing King cases for those clients who purchased the full collections. We considered other alternatives, but decided that Jewelboxing would give us an edge of quality that the other options didn't. Since using Jewelboxing, we have seen the sales of our sets (in which the cases are included at no extra charge) increase dramatically - in fact we have seen the two best months out of 2 years already this year, because of the increased sales of these special collections."

Here's to hoping everything is looking perfectly illustrated with all the characters in Austin, Montgomery, Temecula, Housatonic, Chicago, Atlanta, Scottsdale, Santa Barbara, Highland Falls, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Toronto, Spingville, Gainesville, Venice, Santa Monica, Morrisville, New York, Davis, La Palma, Brampton, Mililani, Vancouver, New Brunswick, Nisswa, Rochester and Fairfield.

Now in Exciting...Monochrome?

Because we're in the business, we try to keep tabs on what else is out there in the disc packaging market. One thing we've heard a lot about, as you probably have too, is Lightscribe, developed by Hewlitt-Packard. It's an admitted cool system where you're able to burn an image straight onto a disc. It's a method that's been used by the big disc manufactures for years, but now the price of the technology has come down enough to make it a viable option for consumers.

In looking at all the info we could find on Lightscribe, reading up on how the laser works, at what image resolution it can burn, and other techie interests, we were more than a little disappointed when we saw samples of the discs. Given the limitations of the laser, black, and shades thereof, is the only color available to anyone who uses the system. The sample included in their press kit makes "Vacation in Hawaii" look dated and, frankly, a little dreary. You can imagine that the original picture they used was filled with vibrant blues and greens; the kinds of colors you'd remember from a trip like this. Shouldn't you have something that immediately catches your eye, something that doesn't require you to look past the old-timey monochrome?

Now while the Jewelboxing System doesn't have any flashy, futuristic lasers at its disposal, we think the final output is a hundred times better. You get full color discs and a snazzy case to stick it in too. And the only piece of technology needed? A color printer.

But heck, despite our little concerns about it, we still think this Lightscribe thing is pretty cool. So even if you have one, you're inevitably going to want to stick it in something nice, aren't you?

There's nothing dull and dreary about those in Abbeville, Saint Peter, North Chatham, San Francisco, Galena Park, Nashville, St. Louis, Spruce Pine, Newton, Walnut Creek, Valencia, Springfield, Surrey, New York, Winnipeg, Tucson, Elgin, Atlanta, Mexico City, McLean, Denver, South Windsor, Norwalk, Eden, and Boston.

We're Being Completely Open With You

Outside of the tech world, we've been hearing more and more buzz about open source media and technologies. For example, on Monday's "Morning Edition," NPR ran this story about the Brazilian government choosing open source, Linux-based machines over those running Microsoft Windows. No doubt you've also heard the buzz about the cool open source Firefox browser. And what about Archive.Org, filled to the brim with copyright-free media?

Well, we here at Jewelboxing don't want to miss the boat on all of this. We don't have a programming division quite yet, so we can't offer you a hot new operating system or browser, but media we can do. That said, we're making the following available as an open source file. Do with it as you see fit. Feel free to pass it around to every single person you know. In fact, we'd encourage it.

Open Source Jewelboxing Media

Our hearts are completely open to those in Edmond, Portland, New York, Mentor, Wien, Minneapolis, Bonita Springs, Los Angeles, Germantown, Arlington, Lake Mary, Omaha, Baldwin Harbor, Yonkers, Arden, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Snowboxing

Believe it or not, very few people ask us, "If I drop a couple of Jewelboxing cases in the snow, will I be able to find them?" Well, for you curious few, or those too shy to ask, the definitive answer is: Probably.

While the cases, without their paper inserts, are completely clear, and blend into the snow exceptionally well, we've found that with aid of reflection, careful observation, and not having much to do, you will ultimately prevail in finding your beloved cases. Observe:

Missing

Found

Missing

Found

We appreciate the inquisitive people in New York, Vancouver, Alexandria, Cincinnati, Chicago, Canton, Paris, Clovis, Harleysville, Baton Rouge, Greer, and Richmond.

Carson Workshops

Jewelboxing is proud to be a supporter of the upcoming Carson Workshop "How to Build a Professional Database-Driven Website" in London next month. The one-day workshop, taught by two of the most innovative developers in the field, Mike Buzzard (of k10k and Cuban Council) and Chris Lea (of Media Temple and Newstoday), will cover everything you need to know about building an enterprise-level, database-driven website, with a focus on PHP, Apache, and MySQL.

But in addition to the vast, mind-boggling array of knowledge you'll walk away with, you'll also be treated to a bundle of goodies and discounts, including 15% off hosting through Media Temple, and a 40% discount on Zend PHP Certification. You'll also get a copy of The Web Developer's Survival Kit, a disc filled with loads of development ideas, tools, script, and code, all packed in an attractive, perfectly-designed, king-sized Jewelbox. The big day is Saturday, February 19th, from 9am to 6pm at Oyster Partners' Studio in London. The workshop is down to its last few seats, so if you're interested, jump on board now by registering at www.carsonworkshops.com.

Many thanks to the fantastic, surely-soon-to-be Zend PHP Certified in Chicago, Starkville, NYC, Caribou, Huntington Park, St. Paul, Vineland, Toronto, Odense, Marietta, Middleboro, Chestnut Hill, Manhattan, Cork, Middleboro, LA, Durant and Atlanta.

Our Staff Will Be Glad to Help You as Soon as They're Done Dealing With A Personal Matter of Some Delicacy

To a certain person in New York City whose email address keeps bouncing and who asked us a long poetic question about the possibility of using our system to produce a demo reel for a super-secret game project involving virtual sex and classical music, the answer you're looking for is "sixty".

Our undying affection and deep respect goes out to our new friends in St. Paul, Arden, West Newton. Emeryville, Menlo Park, Memphis, Manhattan, Burbank, Arlington, Easthampton, Seattle and Santa Monica.

Happy Birthday, Bubble Wrap!

Amy here at Jewelboxing HQ alerted us to an important anniversary we might have otherwise missed: it's the 50th anniversary of bubble wrap. You can read the whole AP story here about the pair of New York inventors, Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding, who developed this wonderfully protective instrument by accident, while they were trying to create a new type of textured wallpaper.

On a personal note, we don't know where we'd be without the stuff. We go through rolls and rolls of it packaging Jewelboxing and all our other miscellaneous products. It seems like the UPS guy is here dropping more off nearly every week, each roll round and awkwardly shaped making it hard to lug up the stairs, yet surprising light, which sort of makes up for it. We also use a ton of bubble wrap-inspired products, from the Square Spongy Pad Thingamabobs we include in our Studio kits to help separate cases (we're sure these have a real name, but we'd prefer to continue along with this given title) to our now-famous Bags of Air machine, which does just exactly as it sounds and its output helps keep every Jewelboxing order safe in transit when it goes from here to you.

So a big thanks and a happy birthday to bubble wrap and here's to hoping everything is safe and snug in Largs, Los Angeles, Conroe, Rochester Hills, Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, New York, Salt Lake City, Addis, Austin, Sandy, Chappaqua, Toronto, Basingstoke, Lincoln, and Hale.