It's awfully glamorous working at MOO, as I'm sure you can imagine. Based in the heart of the up-and-come 'East End' of London, we're working in a place steeped in history, industry and creativity. The oldest printing company in the country is just around the corner. The first magazine in England was published about 5 minutes from here and Charles Dickens set the scene for much of 'Oliver', on the Green around the corner. If that wasn't enough, Madonna and Alexander McQueen have been spotted hanging out in the very market where the MOO Crew buy their lunch.
Look, it's Madonna, hanging.
Yep, the glamour never stops. Or, that's what we tell ourselves when faced with this:
It's a stack of the awesome new MOO MiniCard Holders. Each one needs to be checked - have some special MOO magic placed inside - and packed ready for travelling.
So it's been all hands on deck:
From Richard (The Man in Black - our CEO) to Brian (blue shirt - VP of operations), to Kim (Product Manager - yellow cardigan) to Pete (left hand side, Global Marketing Manager).
Hardly anyone was spared this mammoth task - here's Lisa (VP of Sales & Marketing), Dan (Operations Supervisor) and Alicia (Associate Marketing Manager).
And suddenly, from the initial chaos, order is restored:
As a reward for all the hard work, it's back to the glamour again. Champagne! Well. Kind of. It's special British Champage. You know, some people might call it 'Tea'.
But the true glamour in this post is provided by 'elb_the_prof', with this lovely photo, proving all our hardwork was worth it. She's already received her MiniCard Holder, and it looks like it's a hit!
Don't quote me on this, but it could perhaps - in this instance - even be said to be more attractive than the photo of Madonna. Even better, the MiniCard Holder is more likely to hold your MiniCards without complaint for long periods of time. I have to admit I've not asked Madge to hold my cards, so I can't say that is 100% true. Perhaps if you see her you could ask her, and let me know?
Thanks for your help.
Here we are, just a few days after Easter, and already the Egg Hunt seems like ages ago. It's not over yet though, don't forget - the grand prize draw is still to come, on April 21st! In the meantime, look at this:
It's MOO's very own Mexican Wrestling Eggs, in real life! Painted very carefully by tonya2hadassah. We can only applaud such a steady hand and such dedication. Amazing!
There's been lots of great stuff whizzing by in the Flickr pool recently - here's a few colourful photos to get your creative juices flowing:
Cards and photo by 'Hello I'm James', to promote 'Gimme', his new Facebook App.
Lovely card and packaging, by 'Pukashell Creative Designs', used to package items sold in her Etsy Shop
Super-cute MiniCard and matching badges, by 'thickblackoutline' - get one for yourself, via Jen Hacking's site 
A lovely photo of 'thinklia's Text MiniCards, made to promote her creative work
And finally... a man in a big green hairy suit. He has, in his left hand, a MiniCard, handed to him by 'Cellach' - who took this photo. She says "Anyone dressed this way is *asking* to have their picture taken! Luckily, he was quite happy about it." The MiniCard was given so he could look himself up online at a later date. (If you're reading this, Mr Green Man, is your name Matt? You look like someone I went to college with).
Hope that gives you a few ideas for cards of your own - if not then perhaps a hot new outfit.
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And last but not least - Vote for MOO in the Next Web Awards! We've been nominated for Best European Company, along side eBuddy, Bebo, Dailymotion and Hyves. All votes count - especially yours :o)
First up, something to make you smile. The wonderful Jonathan Howells, film making star of the MOO Egg Hunt has finished his latest masterpiece. You met 'Hugo, The Cat of 1000 Faces', while searching for Eggs - here we present Episode 3, The Star Wars special. We're not sure who we love best, Leia, Darth or Yoda... Enjoy! Next-up, something to read. We've talked about Flickr user Epmd many times before. He's been leaving MiniCards in various places around the globe as an ongoing 'Found Art' project. Now he talks about the project in this great article on JPG. Epmd has also inspired other Flickr users to start their own projects. Macwagen has taken up the challenge and is photographing and mapping his cards as he leaves them. You can see his map here. If you'd like to take part in something MOO related but a bit less energetic, join in the MOO-SLAM project. Rei Dishon, Tel Aviv based photographer and designer is collecting MiniCards to display as part of an exhibition. He's already exhibited in Italy and would like to gather cards from other MOO users out there for his next, more local exhibition. Find out more, and get involved. And now, the winner of our MiniChallenge! We asked you to write a poem about the MOO Egg Hunt, or MOO itself. Thank you so much for all your entries, both on the main MOO site - and on LiveJournal. Judging this was much harder than anticipated! The winner is this late entry by Doomz. We were most impressed at the way he managed to sneak so many of our Egg Hunt Partners names in there - and bad yolks, indeed :-) Here is his winning entry: ---------- This game turned our heads around like we were trapped in a twister Picture-perfect moments, man, we should’ve caught it on Flickr A lot of crazy clues stumped a lot of Moo-lovin’ folks We should get Etsy tees saying: “We suffered some bad yolks” It’s like a Picnik, packing omlettes by the dozen Post some Blurbs ’bout crackin’ quips with our cousin 40 eggs hidden from here to Timbuk2 With crazy rhymes written up by you-know-who If I had more time, I had far more rhymes bakin’ So Moo could really see my Style Shakin’ But for now I’ve gotta get crackin’, so this here rhyme’s fine While I wait for an egg hunt in 2 double-oh 9!!! ---------- Congratulations! Details of your prize will follow next week. And finally - it's the list of super-sleuth winners of the Great Outdoors Egg Hunt. Our Egg Cracking Heroes and their cities of choice are: Diane Tani: San Fransisco Jo Eaton: New Zealand Jennifer Rupert: New York Gill Smart: Glasgow Paul Beech: London Carlos: Bacelona Ben Blue: Paris Luke Canvin: Oxford Laura Mundee: Austin Kevin Low: Japan Julien Simery: Belgium Frances Wong: Toronto Allyson Newell: Niagra Falls Congratulations to you all - and if you've not received details of your prize yet, it'll be coming via email early next week. Happy Easter Everyone! PS - If you've ordered from MOO in the last few days, please note that there is no UK postal pickup until Tuesday 25th, due to public holidays. This means we'll be shipping your orders as fast as we possibly can, from Tuesday.
Yes, after all this time, our very own, custom designed MiniCard holders are in stock and available to buy! Forgive me for sounding over-excited, but really, we've waited so long for these, we're like Children at Christmas now they're here.
They're specially designed for MOO, by Steven Jones, and hold up to 15 cards. You can slide them open with your thumb, and there's a special ramp inside to help the cards come out easily.
They're designed to be opened and dispense cards with one hand, so you can hold a drink in the other, and not spill it on the oh-so-important person you've just met. "My Card" - you can say, with a slightly raised, James Bond eyebrow, then flip 'em out of your pocket and in to their hand in one, slick, sophisticated movement.
Look!
Well, we're eggtremely sad to say the Online Egg Hunt and the hunt for Eggs in the Great Outdoors is finally over. Friday's winners are listed at the end of this post, and winners of the Outdoor Hunt will be notified in the next 3 days. There are, however still some Eggs hidden in orders making their way across the globe, so look out for them - and if you do get lucky, fill in your details on the Egg Hunt page, to claim your prize.
Don't forget there's still the Ultimate Egg Basket prize draw too! On April 21st, we'll select one overall winner from all the correct entries we've received, to win a basket full of upto $1000 worth of prizes.
Thanks to everyone for playing! We've really enjoyed your puzzling, your teaming up, your 'Eureka!' moments, and the fantastic little poems of Corvus, our wonderful clue-writer.
And, talking of poems, we've decided to have a Mini-Challenge.
Pen us a poem about Egg Hunting, clue-solving or MOO istself and post it in the comments below. We'll pick one winner on Friday afternoon to win a special prize. Go on - you know you want to!
We'll start the ball rolling with a couple of poems in honour of Corvus, The Cluewriter himself:
Here's Alicia's poem:
He came to us, an angel
Behold in golden hues
He stepped up to the challenge
To write for us some clues
With very little notice, and very little time
He produced within minutes, his first amazing rhyme
These poems were ever so beautiful, at writing he is adept
These poems took you all over the big wide internet
He helped you find our Eggies, he helped you crack the code
And for his work, forever, our gratitude he's owed
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And here is mine:
Corvus, thank you for the help
You gave us all at MOO
How could we do a hunt without you?
I really haven't a clue.
It's been great fun
We've enjoyed the ride
We're sad it had to end.
But one things for sure,
We know it's true,
MOO's got a brand new friend.
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Think you can do better? (I don't doubt it). Well - Get cracking!
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And finally, the winners of Fridays Eggs. The Egg Scrambling Heroes are:
Egg Thirty-Eight: Alex Rea, at 11:15
Hint #1: What sort of outing might include sandwiches, kite flying and badminton.
Hint #2: What does their principle disagreement center around?
Hint #3: The last two stanzas tell you where to go on this partner site!
Still stuck? The Egg was hidden on image editing site, picnik!
Egg Thirty-Nine: Kymberlie R. McGuire, at 17:01
Hint #1: The second two blanks are decoys.
Hint #2: There's a command verb hidden in the poem too!
Hint #3: Where else might we keep sets of all our photos?
Still stuck? The egg was hidden in the Moo Pool on Flickr!
Egg Forty: Susan Amy V , at 17:10
Hint #1: Need to check the prize list? You've been to this site before!
Hint #2: You know which keywords to search for, right?
Hint #3: Every single one of you, give yourselves a HUGE pat on the back for playing along! I've been watching you figure things out and I think you're all amazing!
Still stuck? The egg was hidden on Blurb!
It should be lots of fun. As we have a couple of blogs, it'll be easier to check out the main MOO blog for clues. We'll be posting clues up twice a day - once in the morning, around 11am GMT and once in the afternoon, around 5pm GMT.
Start playing now! And happy hunting!
