Dramel Notes: explore

Paperless is here to stay — and for very good reasons, too!

Here, I want to explore five of the best digital alternatives to traditional Christmas greetings cards and show you how paperless can make this festive time of the year even more memorable.

If you are looking for seasonal inspiration for family or for work, check out these digital choices to complement or replace the paper card this Christmas.

1. E-Cards For All Occasions

Probably the biggest direct competitor is the electronic card (or e-card). There are many paid and free e-card services available online, but creating your own from scratch using email clients like Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail are my preferred choice.

This gives you the chance to get creative and have fun with family, friends or colleagues, and really gives Christmas that personalized touch.

For those of you with family and friends overseas, or for people working away during the festivities, e-cards can also provide an instant means to say something special at the right time.

For business purposes, you can also use affiliate tracking software to make sure your message was received and fuel further conversation.

Here’s an example of e-cards in action. In this case, it was the team at Vertical Leap (my place of work) getting festive and donating to Save the Children Christmas Jumper Day:

2. SMS From Santa

For younger members of the family, what better way to say Merry Christmas than with a call or SMS direct from Santa Claus? Santa can chat directly to your children or even text your phone with a personalized message.

In this example from Personalisedsantaletter.co.uk, text messages will be sent over the festive season, and throughout the week building up to Christmas day.

This can be great for checking children have been good, reinforcing what they are hoping for from Santa, and making Christmas morning extra special for you and your family.

Here’s an example of the type of personalizing that can be achieved to make your children feel truly special this Christmas:

3. Video Greetings

Depending on how tech savvy you are, video greetings can be a fantastic way to wish people well over the holiday season.

Basic video greetings can be recorded and send from mobile to mobile, or you may wish to use some of the paid-for retail offerings. Examples of this include MoonPig and VideoGram, although many other alternatives are available (including free options).

Here’s the video explainer from MoonPig:

4. Audio Greetings

Saying (or even singing) your seasonal messages can be fantastic means to share personality this time of the year.

An audio message can be an easier option for the less technical savvy, and can be attached to emails, sent via SMS, or included as part of a digital or traditional card or message.

5. DIY Digital Photo Collages

From static images to photo slideshows and more, collages can be an excellent way to get everyone involved with the festive fun.

They are quick to create, provide lots of follow-up opportunities – including personalized gifts – and enable you to create whatever your imagination can come up with. It is also a great way to humanize your brand.

Almost every mobile phone includes app functionality for creating collages, as do most basic office applications.

Here’s some my work team showing a basic collage for Christmas:

Conclusion

At this time of the year, wishing colleagues, friends, family members and loved ones good will, regardless of the medium, is a great thing to do.

With the growth of digital alternatives to the traditional paper greetings cards, e-cards, audio, and photo collages, give you an immediate method to communicating when it is likely to matter the most. Whatever your medium, make sure your messages are well received this Christmas time.

Merry Christmas to you all and a happy New Year!

Image Credits

Feature Image: Stokkete/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photos: Images by Vertical Leap. Used with permission.
All screenshots by Lee Wilson. Taken December 2015.

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Being a geek isn’t about joining a tribe: it’s about gaining knowledge. And you can’t gain knowledge of something you’re not willing to explore.

That’s why, when Harry explained how your Apple/Android/Windows hate is irrelevant, it really got me thinking about my own preferences and prejudices.

Do I prefer Mac OS X to Windows because it’s better, or just because I preferred Lion to Windows 8 back in 2012? Why do I think Evernote is better than OneNote? Do I think Google is the best search engine for any particular reason, or just because it was better than the competition back in 2003?

And, more importantly, if I try new things out could I become more productive?

Many tech fans don’t ask themselves these questions, and that’s too bad – we’re probably all missing out on something awesome. The only way you’re going to find out is by experimenting, so I’ve been trying to do that more. Here’s what I found out, and how I hope we can all keep learning.

DuckDuckGo Taught Me “Familiar” Does Not Mean “Better”

Also, I had to google how to take a screen grab on the mac. COMMAND+SHIFT+4?! I thought these things were supposed to be intuitive.

— Sarah Jørgensen (@sosarahsays) August 19, 2015

Humans tend to conflate what’s “intuitive” with what’s “familiar”, which creates a big mental bias against trying new things. A longtime Mac user who switches to Windows is going to think of anything different as hard, because it’s really easy to forget the years spent learning how to use Mac OS. The same goes for switching to any system: you’re going to think of anything you need to re-learn as “unintuitive”, when it’s usually just a different way of doing things with its own pros and cons.

Thoughts on Windows 10 so far: It took me way too long to find out where Word was. Intuitive, my foot!

— Beth Montague-Hellen (@PhdGeek) September 2, 2015

That’s why, to really get a feel for something, you need to work out more than your initial impressions – and be willing to throw yourself into something new. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, which is why I forced myself to use DuckDuckGo for two months. I’d been meaning to do this for a long time, but put it off because I was nervous: blogging for a living means I search a lot, and I didn’t want anything to slow me down.

In the end, when I finally did give DuckDuckGo a fair chance, I ended up loving it. Not right away, mind you – I was annoyed with the differences at first – but after a few weeks of using DuckDuckGo I found all sorts of things I preferred, like the excellent !bang system for searching other sites and support for keyboard shortcuts. Now that the experiment is over, I’m still using DuckDuckGo constantly – and my life is just a little bit better because of it.

Now, I’m not saying DuckDuckGo is the right search engine for everyone to use. But I am saying that, if you’re not willing to give other tools a chance, you don’t actually know what’s right for you: you’re just using something out of habit.

A little willingness to experiment could pay off for you.

OneNote Taught Me to Ignore My Prejudice

In the mid-2000s I was a massive Linux fan, and at some point slowly drifted to the Mac side of things. That entire time, however, I’ve read people in forums repeat one simple mantra: Microsoft is stupid. Their products are bad. We hate Microsoft. If you find yourself agreeing with universal rules like this, you’re probably denying yourself access to something cool – whether you know it or not.

Which brings me to OneNote. I’ve been an active Evernote user for a half-decade, using it as my default place to dump ideas and things I wanted to try later. I’d heard a lot about why OneNote was better, but never gave it a shot. If I’m honest, it’s my general dislike of Microsoft was no small part of what held me back.

And you know what? That was stupid.

Because for the last few months, I’ve been absolutely loving OneNote. There are so many little features it offers that Evernote just doesn’t, and I never would have found out about them if I let my anti-Microsoft prejudice keep me from using the software. I tried it out as an experiment, and ended up migrating all of my old notes to OneNote. I haven’t looked back since, and am happier now because I tried something new.

Everyone is Biased, But Experimenting Helps

The point of this article isn’t that you should switch to OneNote, or switch to DuckDuckGo: the point is to try new things. The world of technology changes fast, and what was relatively terrible three years ago might be fantastic now. The only way you’re going to find out is by giving things a shot.

Everyone is biased, and its time we all stopped pretending otherwise. If you’ve been using OS X for 15 years, it’s unlikely you’re going to love Windows 10 after one hour of usage. But give a new system like that some time, and you’re bound to find some things you like – and that knowledge can help you get more out of your devices, whichever OS you decide to stick with.

Basically, if you want to get more out of your technology, you have to be willing to experiment a little.

Even if you’re not a Linux fan, the experience of booting up a Linux Live CD and trying it out can show you a different way of thinking about technology – one where you take a more on-hands approach.

Even if you’ve used Firefox for ten years, giving Microsoft’s new Edge browser a try could show you something you didn’t know you wanted.

Even if you prefer Android, observing the reasons your iPhone-using friends and family enjoy their devices can leave you with a better understanding of how people relate to technology.

It’s 2015: there’s very little in tech that sucks right now. Trying new things out is fun, and you’ll learn a lot.

So I want to know: which tools should I give a shot next? I’m willing to learn if there’s something you think is great, so let’s chat.

Image Credit: Dirty and clean work table by Elvetica via Shutterstock