Put your name in lights -- or on a gingerbread cake -- with PixyMe

PixyMe places your personalized message directly into a picture as if it was photographed that way.

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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Put your name in lights -- or on a gingerbread cake -- with PixyMe

May 9, 2010

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2010, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2010, The Post-Standard

   Postcards are dull and boring. Wouldn't you like to send one with your name in lights? Or with your name and greeting photographed on a gingerbread cake?
   There are two ways to do this. The hard way is to buy some lights, string them up in the right pattern, turn them on and stand back far enough to get everything in the picture, then snap away and find somebody to make a postcard out of it, then finally buy a stamp. Or go bake a cake and inscribe your greeting in the frosting. And then take a picture, find somebody to make a postcard out of it and go buy a stamp.
   Whew.
   The easy way is to go to the Apps store with your iPhone or iPod Touch (stick with me if you don't have either one) and buy PixyMe, which will set you back all of $1.99. (Apps Store programs are nearly all very cheap if they're not free.) Go to www.pixyme.com.
   If you don't have an iPhone or Touch, you can simply go to the PixyMe company's Web site at www.tukaizproducts.com/catalog. You'll be able to do most of the cool things right from the Web.
   What cool things?
   Everything you can do is based on a technological breakthrough that perfectly places your personalized message directly into a picture as if it was photographed that way.
   My name in lights was the first thing I tried. I got Elvis -- OK, "Elvis" -- to help out, and got top billing in Las Vegas. I tried the cake, too. It's been 37 years since anybody wrote my name on a cake; PixyMe did it readily.
   Designing a custom-made postcard and mailing it to someone (or to yourself if you're shy about this kind of thing) is ridiculously cheap, only $1.99. When you use the Web site, you can design wall calendars (for $20) and desk calendars ($15). Notecards, greeting cards and fancy invitations created on the Web site cost $30 for a set of 20, or a lot less if you order more.
   PixyMe, the iPhone and Touch app, doesn't have options for calendars, cards and invitations, but you get a bunch of free additions to postcards. You can store that photo of Elvis in front of your marquee right on your iPone or Touch, or you can send it by e-mail to your friends. You can even post it right from PixyMe to your Facebook page.
   So far, PixyMe doesn't have the option of sending someone that actual gingerbread cake with your message on it. But, hey, you never know.