Webware

MyPunchbowl has a new service for remembering people's birthdays.

Designed to keep you from forgetting when it's somebody's special day, you can set up reminders that can be sent to both you and your friends. To do this, the service has employed a system that pesters your friends to add themselves to your personal database. In the process, the hope is that they'll join the system too.

Right now you can do this via e-mail, IM, Twitter, and Facebook. In all cases, it sends out a quick mm/dd/yyyy request to your contacts, along with the option for them to hide the year they were born. There's also the incentive for them to sign up, since when they're done putting in their birthday, it tells them when yours is, and gives them the option to squirrel it away by signing up themselves. Once they've done this, it's added to your database where you can filter them down into special groups like friends, family, college buddies, etc.

My one major beef with this service is that if you're trying to get birthday information from your friends on Facebook, it's likely already there. There are also a handful of apps within Facebook that offer this same functionality. Also, since November, Facebook has had its own weekly reminder service that you can sign up for that tells you whose birthdays are coming up. For that reason, MyPunchbowl's service ends up being a better solution for Twitter, although I'll be honest here--I don't care about the people I'm following on Twitter as much as I do about the friends and family I'm connected to on Facebook.

Where the system holds real value is that it's deeply tied into MyPunchbowl's other services. For instance, if it's someone you were never intending to get a gift or a real card for, you can simply use MyPunchbowl's eCard service and send it to them using the information you've already gathered. By contrast, you can also turn around and begin planning a party right away using the built-in tools. For that, there's some real value, which is what makes it worthwhile if you're already using the service to do the party planning. If not, you may be better off using a Facebook app like Birthday Exporter to take that birthday data to a calendar service you're already using.

MyPunchbowl lets you quickly add people's birthdays, either manually or by sending out requests via e-mail.

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When you want to send out a blast to your friends to get their birthdates you can do it via e-mail, or through Facebook and Twitter. There's also a link you can send through e-mail that will get them to the entry page.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Web party invitation and management service MyPunchbowl on Tuesday relaunched with a new look. While mostly a new paint job, the big, new feature is the invitation designer, which has been renamed as a "studio."

Where the service's former system had users simply picking colors, pictures, and some ready-made templates, the results of using the new tool resembles a real life paper invitation. Users can still select things like the coloring and background, but there are new flourishes like colored ribbons, textured backgrounds, and various form factors that mimic proper card stock.

The new designer lets you tweak each aspect of an invitation, right down to the ribbon.

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All of this amounts to little besides the invitation page people visit. It doesn't show up (much) in the e-mail, and you can't have it printed and sent out, which would make the whole experience feel a little more fulfilling. Your newly designed invitation will simply sit alongside the party details. The company is pushing the "green" aspect of this, but it's a shame you can't get your handiwork turned into a real-world good. Like Moo.com's mini cards, there's something fantastic about quirky designs for everyday things that could make MyPunchbowl stand out from competitors like Evite, Facebook, and Socializr.

Speaking of which, I think the service is still running up against bad public perception. Many people I know simply go to Evite because it's what they've always used. Also, when MyPunchbowl first launched, one of its stumbles was the e-mail invites, which were promptly being delivered to people's spam folders. Since then, it looks like the problem has been fixed, as I tried sending out an invitation to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and my work e-mail. All went through without a hitch.

The other big hurdle, which I've pressed on in the past, is the big competition from Evite and social networks like MySpace and Facebook which have integrated events management services. For many, including myself, this is just an easier option--even if it's not a better one. To its credit, MyPunchbowl has done a great job at letting people suck in contacts from elsewhere, then turn around and advertise it at those places from the very same tool. Going forward, it's simply going to be a question of whether or not people will be willing to go through all that just to have a better functioning invitation.

Here's a video of MyPunchbowl founder and CEO Matt Douglas talking about the new design tool. It's worth noting you can't use it unless you're a registered user.

Related: $2.1 million for invite start-up MyPunchbowl

Contour Venture Partners is the lead investor in Series A funding for Punchbowl Software, which is behind the event-planning and invitation site MyPunchbowl.

Total cash raised was $2.1 million; the other investors in the round include Intel Capital and eCoast Angels.

Previously, Framingham, Mass.-based Punchbowl Software had raised seed funding from Intel and eCoast.

MyPunchbowl's team said that the fruits of the Series A round will be visible soon, with new features and new hires on the way. But invitation start-ups are in a tough spot; IAC's Evite is as big as most of its smaller competitors combined, and Facebook's "events" application has become popular for casual and large-scale get-togethers.

MyPunchbowl's pitch is that it helps with the entire planning process, not just the invitation, and that there are plenty of people looking for that. "We've seen explosive growth since our first...funding last year," CEO Matt Douglas said in a statement.

Coordinatr is a new events communication service that's been designed for creating spontaneous get-togethers among tight knit groups of friends. The setup is similar to MyPunchbowl and Crusher, with just a few form fields that need to be filled out to create an event. What makes the service particularly useful is its integration with high profile media sharing sites and a great mobile service that lets you send quick distributed messages to the rest of your party friends.

While MyPunchBowl was one of the first of these services to really embrace that people using these services share their party media elsewhere, Coordinatr takes the process a step further by giving everyone with access to the event page a special tag to use. Adding that tag to photos (on Flickr) and videos (on YouTube) will automatically add them to the community page without requiring anyone with administrative access to the event to have to link up content manually.

There are all sorts of notifications options for Coordinatr. All of them can be toggled through various e-mail addresses and even SMS text messages to various phones. (click to enlarge)

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Besides media sharing (usually an afterthought when the hangover wears off), the core part of the service--inviting and adding friends, is all handled through Plaxo, which lets you plug in your e-mail credentials and nab contacts without having to create an invite in each e-mail service. Pretty standard stuff really, but Coordinatr is smart enough to let you create custom groups of friends from those contacts that you can send out quick invites en masse.

Those same people on your quick lists can also elect to sign up to a mobile notification service that lets you send out SMS notifications, be it a quick location change or other important information. If I were to go back in time to my high school days, I could see this being a helpful way alert the rest of my fellow partygoers if the cops had just shown up.

At first glance I was quick to dismiss Coordinatr as a late entrant to the events planning game, but it brings to the table a few handy features that innovate the space. Whether that's enough to push it into people's minds when they're planning events might be a stretch. I often run into a lot of resistance urging some of my friends to try out some of the newer events services we write about. Many are simply ingrained in old systems such as Evite, with too much fear to try some of the next generation planning services like Socializr, MyPunchbowl, and Crushr to avoid confusing their guests.

The best way going forward may simply be a convergence app for all of these events services, similar to what we've seen with tools like FriendFeed, Profileactic, et al. People want one place to view all this information, and there's still not a service that does it.

Your party start page has your events, plus events your friends are taking part in. (note: we'd never have a Webware party on a Monday)

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I don't normally review Facebook applications. I also don't normally install too many on my profile unless I actually deem them useful.

This is an exception.

"Hangover," a Facebook application game created by invitation start-up MyPunchbowl, is utterly pointless and a bit convoluted, but I found it strangely appealing. Maybe that's because it's so off-the-wall.

Essentially, Hangover is like the Old School or Animal House version of kiddie card games like Pokemon. You start out with 10 virtual "cards," one of which you can display on your Facebook profile, and the point of the game is to amass a full hand of all 100 Hangover cards.

Each card represents an aspect of party-animal culture, from the "Walk of Shame" to "Quarters" (that's a drinking game) to "Wingman." Some cards are rarer than others. You can also wind up with multiples of the same card, and hence trade them with other friends who have installed the application. You can also buy cards with points, which you earn by sending friends invitations, or "partygrams." (Or by signing up for a MyPunchbowl account.)

In a funny little twist, you're more likely to get rare cards if you purchase them at "shadier" virtual outlets, which cost more. It takes 2,000 points to buy a pack of cards from a "supermarket," but 4,000 if you want to buy them in a "Chinatown back alley." Cute.

I'm sure Hangover will catch on among high school students who want to school themselves in the jargon of booze culture before going off to college. It's also one of the more amusing Facebook applications I've played with recently, but maybe that's just a symptom of how excited I am for those South by Southwest Interactive parties in a few weeks.

Many folks might have experienced this at one time or another in high school or later on in college. That awkward time you had someone with whom you weren't really friends sign your yearbook. The result was usually the wonderfully vague "have a great summer!" written as speedily as possible. You might have even written the phrase yourself.

Later in life, this comes back to haunt us all, when co-workers we might not know very well get a group card for leaving, getting married, having children, etc. A virtual equivalent to such a card called SquidNote manages to emulate the real thing with character and ease. Despite my general dislike of virtual greeting cards, SquidNote makes the entire experience rather enjoyable. (Editors' note: Since this was published, the company has renamed itself as GroupCard.)

SquidNotes may look like real paper notes, but they're not. Members can add photos and small text notes wherever they please.

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Much like Evite, MyPunchBowl, and others, setting up a SquidNote is a lot like setting up a party invitation. You can skin the card in a pretty wide variety of classic greeting card-like themes or simply build your own. When you're done, you simply send it out en masse for others to sign.

Unlike real-life cards, the burden of passing it on to someone else when you're through has been removed from the equation. Instead, you simply get to plug in contacts from your Outlook directory, Facebook, or various popular Web mail services. Both the creator and recipients can invite people to sign it, which means the creator doesn't always need to know everyone.

In addition to group invites, the service also allows for group gifting. It's linked with Amazon.com to let members add together money in one big pool, in case you would like to avoid walking around, trying to wrangle up cash. It's a nice touch.

Already, there have been a few high-profile SquidNotes, including one for late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien, as well as one for Presidential hopeful John Edwards shortly after he ducked out of the race. While the group card will likely never truly die out, SquidNote makes a strong replacement.

Note: Users of Apple's Safari browser might experience some page-loading errors using the service. We're told that the team is looking into this.

Evite added mobile capabilities yesterday to speed up the party-planning process. Its QuickVite features let you send invitations in one step from an e-mail account or mobile phone, and handle RSVPs the same way. Of course, you can also juggle the details at Evite.com.

This could help to make managing a party less exhausting. Even picking a design for an online invitation can waste time, especially for a last-minute get together. For instance, Evite offers 57 templates for cocktail parties alone, not to mention options for dozens of events from anniversaries to weddings.

In one step, you can plan a party and invite people via e-mail and text message.

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The painless sign-up process requires adding mobile numbers for yourself and friends. But it was weird that Evite didn't prompt me to add names already in my address book--a big drawback if you want 50 of your closest pals to join you on that free dinner cruise that takes off in a few hours.

You can ask QuickVite to send event details to your own phone to check who's coming or ditching. Alerts can ping you when folks reply or when a party you're attending changes. Thoughtfully, however, Evite does not set those alerts by default, so you won't be bombarded by text messages on your handset unless you ask for them.

Among some drawbacks, though, I'd like Evite to offer better integration with maps, as MyPunchbowl does. Improved integration between QuickVite and the rest of Evite features would be nice. I wish I could turn a QuickVite into a regular Evite later, in case I wanted to use the mobile invitation as a save-the-date notice, and then flesh out the details of a party when I had more free time.

Still, this is a step in the right direction for Evite, which is adding QuickVite to Facebook. A mobile application that Evite is building could very well add some of the pieces I found missing in QuickVite. In September the company added a send-to-phone capability allowing people to access party details on their handsets.

Evite manages more than 450,000 invitations every month. It's owned by IAC Search & Media, the parent of the Ask.com search engine and Bloglines feed reader.

(See more party-planning services here.)

There's something to be said about Web services that have been set up to help people coordinate things in the least stressful way as possible. I dig sites like CircleUp (coverage) that offer a way to set up polls, or to solve quick logistical questions within a group, without requiring the creator or the users to agonize over the interface and execution. That's why MyPunchBowl's new checklist feature is pretty much the best addition to a party-planning service yet.

The idea is simple: you, as party creator, make a list of things you need for the party. This list is just for you, in a GTD sense. You can hit one button to add items to your "potluck" list, which is made public to all your invitees. Your party guests can then assign themselves to which items that they'll (hopefully) bring to the party, or add their own items. This helps you avoid making harassing phone calls or e-mails to coordinate the details.

The new checklist feature was launched along with several other updates. The service is continuing its foray into the world of themes with about two dozen Halloween templates and a new duplicate party feature that lets you clone and reuse a party page you've already made--which is helpful if you want to recycle things like a guest list and directions. There's also a bounced e-mail notifier to let you know if your party invitations never made it to your addressees' mailboxes.

I'm still waiting for a feature that will track your recipients' past replies to flag those who say they're coming and never do--and one that flags guests who show up without replying--to let you know when a call, personalized e-mail, or bouncer is in order.

Previous MyPunchBowl coverage:
MyPunchbowl adds themes, public events
Easy event planning with MyPunchbowl

Make a party checklist and indicate the items you want your guests to bring. They can add their own, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I've seen a few good flash mobs in my day. San Francisco lends itself to the strange, including the simultaneous zombie mob and Critical Mass bike ride, which was chronicled by CNET's Declan McCullagh a few months ago. But what if you don't feel like riding a bike, or eating brains? Do sandwiches and potato salad sound better? Picnicmob is a new site full of questions like that--30 in fact. Answering them will help the service figure out where to sit you, in a virtual grid of picnic goers in an upcoming mass picnic flash mob, taking place in five major cities across the U.S.

Is this a match up service? Kind of. Picnicmob's approach is a little bit like eHarmony, the popular dating site that matches people up based on a compatibility test. Most of Picnicmob's questions revolve around social predilections about art, music, and entertainment. They also ask you the tough ones like your stance on sharing food and whether you're able to tolerate children and pets. The hope is that the system will be able to group together units of people who aren't going to rub each other the wrong way, although the exact algorithm isn't revealed.

When each city gets 1,000 signups, the Picnicmob team goes to work. As long as you've registered your answers with an e-mail address, they'll provide you with a time and place. This is the only part where I can see trouble brewing--getting people to choose a date that works for them. Services like MyPunchBowl have gotten around this with their multi-date chooser. Ideally Picnicmob will employ a similar system to avoid no-shows when it comes time for the big event.