San Diego, CA (August 27, 2007) -- Color Card Administrator, Inc. (CCA), the parent company of PrintBusinessCards.com (PBC), announces that its business card website is now compatible with Apple’s new iPhone. Users of the iPhone can now design and manage their business cards online from anywhere. No longer do iPhone users have to order business cards from their desktop or send a reorder into their corporate office. In the near future, PBC plans to allow iPhone users to take their picture with their iPhone and have it appear directly on their business card at the time of ordering.
Apple’s engineering is superb! The fact that the iPhone works with the desktop version of Safari without changes made it very easy to ensure compatibility with PrintBusinessCards.com. The iPhone’s 56k modem speed is also not a big issue when a wi-fi hotspot is unavailable. Our website was initially designed for 56k and 128k modems and our basic interface still reflects it. Much of the ‘heavy lifting’ is done with advanced javascript, which runs better on the iPhone than most computers. When you are in a wi-fi hotspot with the iPhone, pages load almost instantaneously.
We are excited about this because the iPhone is the first cell phone really capable of allowing customers to order cards over Internet. In the past cell phone browsers were too limited, or their interfaces were too small. Our testing shows that even a novice computer user is able to access our site using the iPhone with the same ease of use they typically receive from Internet Explorer.
The iPhone’s full color capability really highlights the amazing designs our community of artists has brought to our site too. Customers who do not already have a business card design can choose from over 6,000 beautiful, full color templates, targeting every major profession. We have over 100 artists now, with varied professional backgrounds from all over the world. One of our artists is even a soldier currently serving in Iraq! You can browse through their designs on our site and even contact them directly if you need photography, custom designs, or if you want to use the image chosen for your card in other media formats (additional advertising, envelopes, letterhead, etc.). For convenience we link directly to the stock photography sites where you can purchase images for additional use whenever available.
Quality is our number one priority; we really need it to be since we guarantee customer satisfaction. All of our cards are printed on quality, 14 pt stock, using an offset press in CMYK full color. Customers have a choice of either uncoated or gloss stocks, both of which were chosen to ensure the most pop for their full color designs.
The iPhone really adds a lot of convenience for our customers. Many of our customers have contracts with us, where we put their corporate design online and manage the proofing and printing of their cards through our site. Now a client on the go can set up their cards online, request approval for those cards via their purchasing manager which allows us to have their cards on the press soon after they put their phone down. They can literally start to order cards the minute they activate their new iPhone with their new cell number.
Most of our corporate level customers have had professional designers and ad agencies set up their business card layouts in programs such as Quark and Illustrator. Our site actually uses Illustrator files on the back end, which ensures fidelity to the original designer’s intent, and any features of Illustrator they wish to use, works flawlessly. Things such as bullet separated text, tabs, and rules for how text can flow has been customized to the needs of business cards. With this, updating a logo down the road is painless and instantly goes into effect for all new orders.
Using our site, corporations and MLM’s can rapidly deploy new branding. They can ensure that all of the cards are done to the same consistent standards; same color, same font, same stock, and same method of printing. We have assisted many times in the rollout of new corporate identities, with each employee customizing their own card with their title, address, phone, and cell numbers. We then drop ship the finished cards directly to each location.
Some of our customers need business cards to match their letterhead and envelopes. We have developed a way of printing in full color, the exact color and pattern on our uncoated stock. We have designs that match ivory, granite, desert storm, tortilla, and confetti papers. We can develop more as needed. It works well enough that we have to tell customers that we just printed it after they have received their order. This can be a very cost effective way of having 3 color, full color, or photographs that match the rest of the letterhead package without the need for a custom full color run every time a cell phone number or email address changes.
Having our site compatible with the iPhone’s browser really brings things full circle for us since we have always used Apple products on the back end. This is the first time our customers are effectively using them as well. The first prototype of the site was developed with Apple’s Filemaker in early 1996. Applescript allowed us to glue the web front end in Filemaker to professional design applications such as Pagemaker, Corel, Illustrator and Quark. Using Applescript cuts down costs and allows us to ensure total accuracy to what was typed in on the website. It also allows us to integrate designs by professional graphic designers using the same system and fonts they originally used to set up the design.
Currently we use an old G4 we took apart and placed in a rack mount case generating our cards. The great thing about old macs is they can continue to be productive long after they have depreciated. This particular computer is over 5 years old and still runs strong. We planned on using it just for development and replacing it later with an Xserver; however, it works so well we have not yet seen the need.
We encourage you to visit our site with your iPhone. Please feel free to email us at support@cardadmin.com and let us know about your experience on our site.
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