Oct 31 2008
Trisha Noel enjoys the Philadelphia Phillies World Series Parade from the LTLprints.com corporate headquarters right next to Love Park in downtown center city Philadelphia.
Exciting stuff! Thanks Trisha for such a cool video. Tons of people out today.
Oct 28 2008
Saturday night was the much awaited Halloween Party at my place, and I must say it was a success. We had loads of people coming through dressed as draculas, tv characters, political candidates, mimes, and much more. The costumes were clever and creative and the drinks were plentiful. My roommates and I had spent a long time decorating, so cobwebs and orange lights draped over bookshelves and hanging spiders (which scared me all night long) dropped from the ceiling. Of course we also had LTLprints of jack-o-lanterns, candy corn, and bats over all the walls and they were quite a hit. People pulled them off the wall all night, played with the material, and would restick them without trouble. I loved watching the look of amazement as people realized how durable and easy to use the material was. They were definitely the hit decoration of the party!
Prior to the party, I came up with an idea for a practical joke. My roommates (Dan and Dave) and I are always joking and kidding around. So, I decided to utilize LTLprints to help out with a little joke. At the final Harry Potter book release awhile back, Dan, Dave, and a few other friends decided to dress up as the Harry Potter characters and head to Borders to purchase their copies. Many pictures were taken that night, but have since been hidden for no one else to see. It took almost 5 months of begging for them to overcome their embarrassment and show me the pictures of that night. Being the nice roomate I am:), I decided to have “larger than life” prints made of Dan and Dave’s Harry Potter debut. I brought the pictures in and Kendall (President of LTLprints) worked his photoshop magic to produce detailed cutouts. I couldn’t wait.
Around 11:30 p.m. in the midst of the party, we unveiled the photos. We put them 
everywhere in the house - the kitchen, the living room, the hallways, all plastered with the image of Dan with a lightning bolt on his forehead and Dave in his Severus Snape outfit. When the guys came up the stairs and saw the prints, their reaction was PRICELESS. Dave immediately tackled me to the couch and Dan’s jaw dropped. Luckily, they thought the joke was hysterical and we laughed about it all night. I must admit I thought there was a chance I’d get kicked out of the house. Phew!
One of the girls at the party actually saw the LTLprints and mentioned it would be a great idea for parties, to have the LTLprints created for the guest of honor. That way, if people wanted to sign it, write messages, etc, they could easily do so and the print would transport home with no trouble. Yet another solid idea for LTLprints!
So, if you need a good practical joke or a good laugh - LTLprints is here for you:)
Oct 20 2008
The team at LTLprints is lucky. No, not because nearly everyone has a naked wall that LTLprints can fill, but rather because we are not selling software for dollars - we’re selling prints. When you sell bits and bites you deal with the ease of data replication, and with that ease comes software piracy. Software piracy and copyright infringement is a hot subject these days. End users see it as a victimless crime and the “norm.”
I was going to hunt down a few ways that you should NOT deal with software piracy, but instead I thought I’d focus on one example of how you should. If you want a good way of dealing with software piracy look no further than our friends at Ripitapp.com. Ripit is “The simple DVD Ripper for Macs.” And Ripit works really well. So well, in fact, that people were starting to steal it. Instead of going on a rant the company made one simple blogpost that sums things up quite nicely. May we be so lucky to have more people like those who did RipIt…
Oct 17 2008
I spend a good amount of time online so I thought I’d share with you some of the cool stuff I’ve recently viewed. This is in no particular order.
Puking Pumpkin
Oct 15 2008
I have been approached by customers and friends questioning the name of the company. In particular some mentioned they thought LTLprints should be read as ¿little prints¿. Well, we say ¿el ¿ tee ¿ el¿ and it clearly stands for Larger Than Life since ‘large’ can be life size or even larger. For instance I am 6¿ 5¿¿ tall and my cutout wouldn¿t even fill the largest print (7¿) entirely.
That said the comment about ¿little¿ really made me think. LTLprints allows you as a customer to place many small cutouts on one large print. Cutouts are parts of pictures being ‘cut out’ from their original background. As long as those cutouts don’t overlap you virtually can place an unlimited number of cutouts on one print. So with this functionality LTLprints provides in all actuality the opportunity to print ¿little¿. A whole bunch of ‘little’ combines to become something ‘Larger Than Life’.
Now your creativity comes into play. Possibilities for ¿LTL = little prints¿ forming ¿LTL = Larger Than Life Prints¿ are endless. Create as many cutouts¿ these ¿ and combine them on one canvas! Here a few ideas:
- Birds Flying
- Butterflies
- Balls jumping around
- All your friends at once
- Save The Day cards
- Name Tags for a larger Event
- You design it!
Check back after we¿ll have launched our catalog end of this month. Based on many interesting designs you will be able to customize and arrange your over-sized wall décor exactly as you want with as many cutouts as you want. Stay tuned!
Oct 14 2008
When I was younger, my mom (a kindergarten teacher) used to have some pretty creative ideas for Halloween
costumes. She could create anything my siblings and I wanted out of everyday household products. Andrea and Derek, my older siblings, took this opportunity to be clever and had some great costumes. Derek strutted down Stratton street as a knight in shining armor, a deck of cards, and a few other classics. Andrea went from a princess to a pirate and everything in between. For me, I had my heart set on the same costume six years running. I was Mickey Mouse, my childhood idol, for six years straight. The most creative I would every let my mom get with my costume was to add tin foil to my mouse ears so I was “astronaut mickey.” Trust me, it was cool.
Anyhow, as I got older, costumes and halloween parties changed. Instead of Mickey Mouse and bobbing for apples, I’ve been a cop, a cowgirl and a girlscout (what girl hasn’t) at a bar in Rittenhouse or Old City because I was too lazy to go costume shopping after work. I must say though, what hasn’t changed is my talent for carving Jack-O-Lanterns. Year after year, my pumpkin caves in the middle and if I’m lucky, maintains one stable eye with no hope for holding a flame in the middle. Ah well, you win some ya lose some, right?
One thing that I am looking forward to is our costume party this year. We’re going to utilize LTLprints to help with our decorations. I’ve been taking pictures all week of decorations I see around Philly. Draculas, scarecrows, ghosts, goblins, and witches will fill the walls of our house in life-size form. I also have some great shots from my trip to Vermont last weekend where the foliage is BEAUTIFUL. Those pics will create a great backdrop print right in our living room. I’m excited b/c I can reuse them year after year if I decide to keep having parties. My aunt is actually taking pics of her kids in their costumes this year to submit and have LTLprints made for her party next year. She’s going to have her wall decor for the party be images of all my little cousins running around from this Halloween. And believe me, those kids are cute in their costumes.
So if I’m on my game next week I’ll try to post some pictures of creative costume ideas my friends come up with at our party. Feel free to suggest any costume ideas or post a pic of yours below. Who knows - maybe an LTLprints image of your costume might be our next project!
Cheers and Happy Halloween!
Oct 08 2008
This time last week Carsten and I packed up and headed west. We were on a mission to woo angel investors into our company and we had a blast doing so. Here is a short video that summarizes just a few of the awesome events we were fortunate enough to experience in the middle of the country - Junction City, Kansas.
Oct 01 2008
Trisha wrote in a post a few days ago: “You shouldn’t be afraid of somebody stealing your idea. You should be afraid of no one ever seeing it.” - How could I not mention this quote in my post last week? Getting out there and telling people about your idea it is good because you:
- get feedback on viability
- get feedback on issues you might overlook
- receive ideas and inspiration what to do (marketing, product etc.)
-find potential customers
-find people that might be spokes persons for you and blog or twitter about you
Then I read a post from Jason Calacanis today. As a general advise for start-ups on how to survive the coming economic downturn and the financial crisis he recommends asking yourself: ‘How good is your idea’? This nicely ties into what I said above. Get outside feedback on your idea. Hard to tell from the inside if it is worth anything.
The second important point Jason made is to ask yourself: “How are you executing?”. Well this is really important. Get your idea out, ask for feedback but then hustle and execute to the best of your abilities. Check what the competition does and you will know if you are onto something because you are better - or not.
Maybe it is something that will eventually turn into something larger than life?
