Elf Yourself and Tule Tool… Interactive Holiday Fun

OfficeMax Goes Live with Elf Yourself for its Forth Straight Year

Last week, my wife spent about a half-hour one evening on OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself adding viral content to her personal Facebook page. It was an instant hit with all of her FB friends and family, as usual – traveling through her familiar circle.

Elf Yourself has gone live in its fourth straight year this 2009 holiday season. OfficeMax has enhanced the fun application this year with new features and capabilities allowing consumers to customize their videos of dancing elves with their own pictures. The Facebook Connect tie-in allows users to upload pictures from the social network and to post their Elf Yourself videos directly to their profiles, as my wife did. That social element goes beyond the application itself drawing laughs from many of our friends and family members.

Hastings Entertainment Provides Free Social Interactive Yule Tool

Then we came across another fancy free social interactive that enables a user to personalize a full-motion e-card video starring themselves and their loved ones or even celebrities in either a “Naughty or Nice” greeting, which is available at http://www.yuletool.goHastings.com.

The user can attach their own personal sentiment and send it to anyone they’d like via email. The Yule Tool was created and developed by Capitola Media of San Francisco, California. The free Yule Tool e-card is designed to be a fun interactive way to celebrate the holidays. This brings up the question… Why haven’t audiences grown tired of interactive tools such as these? Maybe it is not so much the tool as what users can apply to it that keeps it fresh and relevant.
For example, after showing my colleague Dave Lemeiux this Yule Tool, he sent me a pretty funny version of his personalized Yule Tool greeting that he made using Kwame Kilpatrick his wife and girls, seen here: http://yuletool.gohastings.com/card.php?id=1431177947.

This silly personalized message, states: “I’m with both my girls!!!” For those that live in Southeast Michigan, this is probably more of a sad display of our rough history rather than a funny joke. However, that is a nice feature of this Yule Tool… the ability to add a personalized text message in the greeting, which is one advantage over the Office Max Elf Yourself rendition to spread Holiday Cheer to your friends and family.

Twitter users can also follow YuleTool on Twitter.com/YuleTool
@YuleTool’s last Tweet: 13 Days, 12 Hours, 39 Minutes until Christmas of ’2009 – ‘Is It Okay to Give Used?’ http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/11/prweb3255854.htm“.

New Jobs in Michigan? Yes Please!

Companies in Michigan have hired several great people including Jenn Weesies, Patti Swanson and Dave Lemieux due to our young entrepreneurial drive and diverse acumen in business matters.

Recently , Jenn and I were profiled on Metromode Media, an online weekly publication that highlights the positive happenings in the Metro Detroit region (go to www.metromodemedia.com) to learn more.

Metromode has recently launched a new Talent Retention Program to highlight available opportunities and profiles of professionals who have landed or created jobs in the area. I love how Metromode is disputing the myth that you have to leave Michigan in order to find a job! This is an ongoing initiative and they are always looking for new people to profile. So give them a shout if you are creating jobs or have landed a job here in Michigan recently!

Click here to read the profile of Doug Menzer on Metromode.

Click here to read the profile of Jenn Weesies on Metromode