Moo is a UK-based printing company with a rather interesting and specialized niche: they print calling cards from Flickr photos. To introduce their product they made a special offer to Flickr Pro users, sending a free ten-card sampler to the first 10,000 people requesting one. The interesting thing is that it wasn't just a random set of photos — you got to choose from among your own uploaded photos, just as if you were ordering a normal set. I decided to give them a shot.

So here's the first point in their favor. I received a message acknowledging the order, and another advising shipment, but after a couple of weeks I still had not received the cards. I sent them an e-mail using their customer service form asking the status, and heard back from them promptly with an offer to reprint and reship the sampler set. This was a good customer experience, the variety you don't often see.

Today I received the cards, and that's the second point in their favor. They really are as nice as they claim. They are printed on a heavy card stock with a matte finish that shows off the photos well. The flip side contains whatever contact information you want to include, with six long lines to fill. (Actually, it has occurred to me that you don't even need to include contact info. Perhaps a very short story would be an interesting experiment?) The print quality itself is top-notch, limited only by the resolution of your photographs. Overall, they look great, and the people in my office have been impressed by them.

My initial concern was the price, which isn't cheap at $20/100 cards. However, if you compare these to the cheap black-and-white cards available at any office supply chain, you are missing the point. These are a modern take on the traditional calling cards; I could easily see myself placing one on a gleaming chrome tray held by a robot butler, who would then whisk it away to the mistress of the house to announce my visit. Think of them like that and 20¢ isn't so bad; they are that cool.